Should be the pelican bounced off.

For complex numbers my gut feeling is yes, they do.

Sadly I've come to believe the pendulum is going to have to swing about this far before it might have a chance of swinging back.

As intended by whom?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44036716

Points: 137

# Comments: 26

Over the past few years, while homeschooling my daughters, I've come to see the way math is usually taught as horribly pathological. In the US, where we live now, it's often seen as a competitive activity -- almost like a sport. In the UK, where I grew up, that wasn't the case but still it was taught as this huge body of knowledge and skills with almost no motivation.

My daughters are so advanced in math and I really don't believe it's even mostly due to innate ability. It's because, just to take an easy random example, when we studied geometry our very first lesson was me pointing out that the word "geometry" just means "earth measuring", and it was useful for farmers to be able to do that. Or, when we proved the irrationally of sqrt(2), of course I entertained them with the tale of Hippasus being thrown into the sea by the Pythagoreans. For basically everything we've learned there are so many fun stories. It makes me sad that most students of math never get to hear them.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42884456

Points: 4

# Comments: 0