Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T14:57:17.114Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Mathematics, a third way

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Christopher Ormell*
Affiliation:
3 Ingleside Grove, Blackheath, London SE3 7PH, e-mail:[email protected]

Extract

As I write (Spring 2012) I am aware that I have been a member of the Mathematical Association for fifty years. I joined during the annual conference in 1962 when Dr Combridge was the main figure in the society. The highlight was a session at the conference (at King's College, London) by Geoffrey Matthews showing how matrices might be introduced into the school curriculum. Some treated this as hilarious, others as a signpost to the future. My friend Frank Budden and I regarded it as a premature ploy, which, we thought, might not tum out to be such a good idea. We subsequently wrote a successful book Mathematics through Geometry (1964) arguing in detail why the modem mathematics revolution—which was then gathering pace—might end in tears. We identified spatial imagination as the heartland of mathematics, and contrasted it with a denial of spatial imagination in the abstract calculi which were all the vogue at the time.

Type
Matter for Debate
Copyright
Copyright © The Mathematical Association 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)