Papers I find interesting---mostly, but not solely, in Process Algebra---, and some fun stuff in Mathematics and Computer Science at large and on general issues related to research, teaching and academic life.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Arthur Benjamin's Proposal for Changing Maths Education
6 comments:
Kostas
said...
And I was sure he was going to say "logic" :D Wishful thinking. But then his analogy of analog versus digital would be perfect.
I was expecting logic as well. I'll repeat my comment from reddit.com:
Analysis (or Calculus) is certainly the wrong peak - but I'm not sure probability and statistics are the right one.
He's right about one thing, we should focus on the "more modern" discrete math, but this is much more general than statistics.
Rather we should have some number theory, set theory, logic, relations and their classification, algebra and manipulating unknown and infinite sizes. These things, even though you may not encounter them in real-life, train our minds and gives a person an important ability to think abstractly and solve general problems - something that no amount of ε-δ proofs will provide. And with this background, probability theory becomes easy.
Arnar, Kostas, thanks for your comments. I agree with what you say, of course :-) After all, thanks to computer science, logic is the most applied branch of mathematics today. A focus on discrete maths, logic and algorithms would certainly be beneficial in changing mathematics education. However, this would require teachers who are well versed in those areas and I do not think that there many of those around.
A combinatorialist I know wrote to me saying:
"Yes, this will eventually change. Should have started happening 50 years ago, so it might happen within 40 years or so."
6 comments:
And I was sure he was going to say "logic" :D Wishful thinking. But then his analogy of analog versus digital would be perfect.
I was expecting logic as well. I'll repeat my comment from reddit.com:
Analysis (or Calculus) is certainly the wrong peak - but I'm not sure probability and statistics are the right one.
He's right about one thing, we should focus on the "more modern" discrete math, but this is much more general than statistics.
Rather we should have some number theory, set theory, logic, relations and their classification, algebra and manipulating unknown and infinite sizes. These things, even though you may not encounter them in real-life, train our minds and gives a person an important ability to think abstractly and solve general problems - something that no amount of ε-δ proofs will provide. And with this background, probability theory becomes easy.
Arnar, Kostas, thanks for your comments. I agree with what you say, of course :-) After all, thanks to computer science, logic is the most applied branch of mathematics today. A focus on discrete maths, logic and algorithms would certainly be beneficial in changing mathematics education. However, this would require teachers who are well versed in those areas and I do not think that there many of those around.
A combinatorialist I know wrote to me saying:
"Yes, this will eventually change. Should have started happening 50 years ago, so it might happen within 40 years or so."
He does not sound overly optimistic, does he?
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