Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T02:03:04.666Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Probability, pi, and the primes: Serendipity and experimentation in elementary calculus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

Robert M. Young
Robert M. Young*
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio 44074, e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Many years ago, long before it had become fashionable for so many research mathematicians to concern themselves with pedagogy, the renowned topologist Bill Thurston appeared as the keynote speaker at a symposium held at Harvard University. As he approached the podium, he could be seen carrying a set of toy building blocks, the sort designed for children. He was going to use them to construct models for his talk. But before he began, he held up the box and said, ‘You know what, kids love this stuff. What is it that we do to them?’ Of course, Thurston was right. Children have a natural curiosity, an innate sense of wonder about the world. Picasso said that children were natural born painters. Thurston said that they were natural born geometers. How do we help them to recapture that child-like sense of wonder after so many years of neglect?

Type
Articles
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 82 , Issue 495 , November 1998 , pp. 443 - 451
Copyright
Copyright © The Mathematical Association 1998

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.)

References

1. Hilbert, D., Mathematical problems, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 8 (1901–1902) p. 478.Google Scholar
2. Stoppard, T., Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, Grove Press, New York, 1967.Google Scholar
3. Kac, M., Enigmas of chance, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1987.Google Scholar
4. Struik, D. J., A source book in mathematics, 1200–1800, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1969.Google Scholar
5. Young, R. M., Excursions in calculus, Mathematical Association of America, Washington, D.C., 1992.Google Scholar
6. Ayoub, R., An introduction to the analytic theory of numbers, American Mathematical Society, Providence 1963.Google Scholar
7. Hardy, G. H. and Wright, E. M., An introduction to the theory of numbers, (5th edition), Oxford University Press, 1979.Google Scholar
8. Hardy, G. H., An introduction to the theory of numbers, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 35 (1929) pp. 778–818.Google Scholar
9. Pólya, G., Induction and analogy in mathematics, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1954.Google Scholar
10. Dudley, U., Formulas for primes, Math. Mag. 56 (1983) pp. 17–22.Google Scholar
11. Ribenboim, P., The book of prime number records, (2nd edition), Springer-Verlag, New York, 1989.Google Scholar