In the 1980s, all students at Bloomsburg University were required to take at least one mathematics course and I worked with colleagues to develop a suitable offering -- one that did not require expertise in algebra but which emphasized problem-solving. Our course became "Mathematical Thinking" -- and I began to develop suitable materials -- eventually writing and publishing Mathematics in Daily Life: Making Decisions and Solving Problems (McGraw-Hill, 1986). Each of the twenty-two chapters of this textbook is introduced with a relevant quote. Chapter 11, "Visualizing the Structure of Information with a Tree Diagram," opens with two lines by one of my favorite poets, Theodore Roethke:
Once upon a tree
I came across a time.
Showing posts with label problems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label problems. Show all posts
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Monday, March 5, 2012
Poetic Explorations of . . . Mathematicians
In the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (Volume 1, Issue 2), we find "NumenRology: A Poetic Exploration of the Lives and Work of Famous Mathematicians" by Saskatchewan poet, Mari-Lou Rowley. In addition to the following poem, "On Diophantus Arithmetica," Rowley's JHM collection includes "Ode to Alan Turing" and "On Euclid’s Book VII – Elementary Number Theory: Proposition 8." Rowley's lines below wonderfully describe the emotional flow that comes with engaging in mathematics -- as mathematical terms are translated into the human terms of wanting and forthcoming, kneading, . . . and yielding.
Labels:
algebra,
Arithmetica,
Diophantus,
equations,
Mari-Lou Rowley,
negative,
positive,
problems
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