Joshua Judson Rosen <rozzin@geekspace.com> writes:
Kim writes:
Joshua Judson Rosen <rozzin@geekspace.com> writes:
I thought you all might get a kick out of a project on which
I've been working for a while: basically, it's an exercise in
applied mathematics and primitive-art principles.
I've been keeping a weblog for it:
http://www.twisted-muse.org/~rozzin/weblog/VisualIDs?limit=0
Is this a private viewing? I'd love to share it with a couple
folks - one of the teachers I work with, in particular. She has
a dual degree in physics and studio art and is helping me
"prove" that there are other ways to learn math than textbooks!
No, not private at all--actually, since it's a Free/OpenSource
Software project, the more people see it the more chance it should
have of attracting contributions and actually being successful.
I did hold off on actually publishing the /code/ for a while, because
there was a certain minimum quality that I wanted to attain before I
let it out into the world (like raising children, I guess, in so many
ways). But now it's public--so, by all means, share away :)
And, actually..., part of the reason that I wanted to share this with
you, Amy, Bill, and the other educators /is/ that I hope that maybe it
can give you guys something new to work with in trying to get kids
interested in both mathematics and art-history--both the math and the
art can be taken pretty far/deep in something like this, but, at same
time, it's amazing how /basic/ the understanding necessary to get
started on a project like this is; and the very premise of the project
is, in some respect, that the beauty of mathematics and the deep
insight of art should be accessible to everyone--even, hopefully, a
taste of the `daily "aha!"' experience that helps to make both
mathematics and art so lovable for their practitioners.
It's all the same sort of stuff that I was espousing when I was a
student at SHS a decade ago, I guess :)
On that note, my old Senior Project stuff is still up on my website,
if you want to show that to your physics-math-art friend:
Also, I just came across Paul Lockhardt's "A Mathematician's Lament"
the other day, by way of this blog-post:
It's [yet another] interesting essay that addresses the problems with
mathematics-education. His initial statement (after some
illustrative contra-scenery):
Sadly, our present system of mathematics education is precisely
this kind of nightmare. In fact, if I had to design a mechanism
for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity
and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job
as is currently being done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination
to come up with the kind of senseless, soul- crushing ideas that
constitute contemporary mathematics education.
Everyone knows that something is wrong. The politicians say, “we
need higher standards.” The schools say, “we need more money and
equipment.” Educators say one thing, and teachers say
another. They are all wrong. The only people who understand what
is going on are the ones most often blamed and least often heard:
the students. They say, “math class is stupid and boring,” and
they are right.
Mathematics and Culture
The first thing to understand is that mathematics is an art. The
difference between math and the other arts, such as music and
painting, is that our culture does not recognize it as such.
High school still seems, to me..., like a particulary great
opportunity to reach out to growing people in a pivotal moment of
their lives and either nurture them as they grow roots and blossoms or
just save them from becoming disillusioned as the enchantment really
starts flaking off.
I'm still hopelessly romantic about things :)
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