Closer to 13.
Davis and Evi rolled into town around 7:00 Friday evening to do the meet and greet at the end of our lanyarding session, full of talk of the semester and excitement over various projects they have in the works. They took a 7:00 wake-up call Saturday morning and hit the door after breakfast to make it back to Rice for an 11:00 soccer match (Will Rice 4-1 over some other college?).
We didn't even have time to discuss the EPL standings which was probably fine with Davis since my Chelsea Blues still stand at the top of the table. I will note that Davis's Liverpool has patiently climbed back to the top five after a woeful start and their share of road troubles.
The New York Times launched a new blog today about Math. I'm going to add it to Davis's side bar, but thought that some of you might be interested in math as a bloggable concept, rather than as problems to work out (or not work out as the case may be).
It's by Steven Strogatz and here's how it starts:
I have a friend who gets a tremendous kick out of science, even though he’s an artist. Whenever we get together all he wants to do is chat about the latest thing in evolution or quantum mechanics. But when it comes to math, he feels at sea, and it saddens him. The strange symbols keep him out. He says he doesn’t even know how to pronounce them.
In fact, his alienation runs a lot deeper. He’s not sure what mathematicians do all day, or what they mean when they say a proof is elegant. Sometimes we joke that I just should sit him down and teach him everything, starting with 1 + 1 = 2 and going as far as we can.
Crazy as it sounds, over the next several weeks I’m going to try to do something close to that. I’ll be writing about the elements of mathematics, from pre-school to grad school, for anyone out there who’d like to have a second chance at the subject — but this time from an adult perspective. It’s not intended to be remedial. The goal is to give you a better feeling for what math is all about and why it’s so enthralling to those who get it.
So, let’s begin with pre-school.
The best introduction to numbers I’ve ever seen — the clearest and funniest explanation of what they are and why we need them — appears in a “Sesame Street” video called “123 Count With Me.” Humphrey, an amiable but dim-witted fellow with pink fur and a green nose, is working the lunch shift at The Furry Arms hotel, when he takes a call from a room full of penguins. Humphrey listens carefully and then calls out their order to the kitchen: “Fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish.” This prompts Ernie to enlighten him about the virtues of the number six.
Children learn from this that numbers are wonderful shortcuts. Instead of saying the word “fish” exactly as many times as there are penguins, Humphrey could use the more powerful concept of “six.”
As adults, however, we might notice a potential downside to numbers. You can continue here with the full entry.
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