Teaching Mathematics: What, When and Why

An in-depth examination of mathematics education, topic by topic

A Delicious Tour of Mathematics

The wonderful John Stillwell has done it, a 44 minute video that gives a fascinating picture of the vast sweep of mathematics.

John is a Melbourne boy made good, but sadly more honoured overseas than here.

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tom

4 responses to “A Delicious Tour of Mathematics”

  1. Dr Mike Avatar
    Dr Mike

    Nice talk

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  2. dwalbrecht724 Avatar
    dwalbrecht724

    I was very fortunate to have John as a lecturer and a friend. I can higher recommend his books and I’m looking forward to reading his latest book on The Story of Proof: Logic and the History of Mathematics.

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    1. Jon Avatar
      Jon

      He was excellent. I also benefited from his teaching Dave – we were very lucky to be doing maths at Monash then! Cheers Jon

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  3. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Blech. Hate this “proof is underappreciated” crap. Probably want to push real analysis into the calculus setting. Or have 5 year olds learn the Peano axioms.

    Bottom line is calculation is incredibly important for the use of math and is what 95%+ of students need. Sure the kids heading on to pure math grad school, need proofs as their North Star. But not everyone else. We just need the mathematicians to take care of that stuff. And if something works, we can use it. And if it doesn’t, tell us not to.

    I’m not opposed to SOME exposure to proofs for the general population. E.g. geometry (although I think the traditional US course did way too much Euclid proofs and way too little mensuration and solid geometry). Or very moderate “priming of the pump” with BRIEF exposure to epsilon delta for STRONG calculus students. Or the sqrt(2) thingie for STRONG (i.e. a minority of) algebra students.

    I saw the BBC Fermat documentary. It’s great. And I realize that pure math Ph.D. types need to work on stuff like this. Fine. But. Do. Not. push proofs as the “main point of math” for general education. Just…don’t.

    The problem (and I see this on the Internet all the time) is that pure math students may be incredibly smart at math. But they are not so good at strategy. I routinely see them having discussions with the implicit assumption that the average calculus student is a math major headed to R1 grad school later.

    P.s. I like this video better for the sweep of mathematics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsEcpS-hyXw

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