PHILOSOPHY OF THIS SITE

PARCEL ONE: Do the words organic and artistic come to mind when you think
“mathematics”? How about deep and rich? Maybe beautiful? Joyful? Perhaps that is
asking for too much.

Let’s try … Safe? Logical? Useful? (Dry?)

As a teacher, tell me honestly when you used the quadratic formula in your
everyday life. Or that the product of two negative numbers is positive. Or that
there are actually three cube roots of the number eight. Have you met a carpenter
who actually uses sines and cosines in her work?

Again be honest … Do you personally understand how math is useful? Do you know
how math is used in your DVD player? To predict tomorrow’s forecast? To analyse
seismic waves? What is the math that you actually engage in and can personally
attest as useful: Balancing numbers on a tax form? Converting measurements in
cooking? Number crunching? Is that the honest answer? And is that math?

SO … what are we as math teachers teaching? And for what end?

PARCEL TWO: It seems I am leading to a bleak conclusion, but that is not at all
the case. I am heading instead to something joyful, exhilarating and, today, radical.
Why not just teach math for what math is? Why not let math fully and unashamedly
speak for itself?

Math is the beautiful, rich, joyful, playful, surprising, frustrating, humbling and
creative art that speaks to something transcendental. It is worthy of much
exploration and examination because it is intrinsically beautiful, nothing more to
say. Why play the violin? Because it is beautiful! Why engage in math, because it too
is beautiful!

PARCEL THREE: Mathematics is thought of, in some unspecified way, as “practical”

and “useful” by the majority of folk on this planet, and they associate with it
numbers and calculations. Mathematicians find the question:

What is 1345 × 7189 ?

uninteresting. But the question “

 Why should 1345 × 7189 and 7189 × 1345 give the same answer?

a much richer conundrum that homes in on a truth about numbers. Or further:

Is the commutative law true for all types of numbers?

This is much more profound a question! Or better yet:

Can we create a system of arithmetic for which the commutative law is

definitely NOT true?!

How wickedly fun is that!

Why? and what if? questions over simple what? questions are the much deeper,
much more playful, and, in the end, much more meaningful.

PARCEL FOUR: There is no doubt that mathematics possesses immeasurable utility

(and in fact a considerable bulk of mathematics is inspired and motivated by “real
world” practical problems), but the mathematics that comes of it soon begins to
speak to something deeper. Mankind has not engaged in mathematics for thousands
of years simply because it is useful (why did the Babylonians compute hundreds of
Pythagorean triples?), but because it speaks to something transcendental.

Sure, we must teach students certain skill sets so as we don’t keep pausing over
trivial matters on the way to deeper ones, but that set of practical skills really is
minimal. Mathematical matters of everyday life are probably sufficiently dealt with
by early middle school. In the high-school realm, however, with practical skills
essentially out of the way, we can work on issues of intellectual maturity and
growth, on depth of understanding and of flexibility of thought, on learning how ask
questions, to create questions and to extend and push boundaries. These are the
skills required for true success with innovation in business and breakthroughs in
scientific research. But what has happened? High school curricula head deeper into
the direction of skills, usually in a manner that can only be described as oppressive.

HIGH SCHOOL: Memorise the quadratic formula, the vertex formula, the
double angle formulae, the translation properties of graphs, the surface
areas of spheres, cones and cylinders, the box method for graphing
hyperbolas, the change of base formula for logarithms, the properties of a
parallelogram, trapezoid, and a kite, the compound interest formula, the nth
term of an general arithmetic sequence, and so on and so on.
 HIGH SCHOOL: Don’t ask: Why is an ellipse called a “conic section”? Don’t
explore sections of shapes other than cones. Don’t ask if raising numbers to
second and third powers actually has anything to do with squares and cubes?
(What about raising numbers to a fourth power? Why don’t we have a word
for that?) Don’t ask if there are any numbers beyond the complex numbers?
Don’t ask if we can FILO instead of FOIL? Don’t ask why quadratics have a
name associated with the number four? Don’t ask about 0 raised to the
zeroth power or try to come up with a multitude of permissible values for it.
And don’t ever ask at any time for any topic: Why do we need to know this?
(What do you say in response to this question?)

HIGH SCHOOL: Memorise the jargon first. Give names to things before you
know they could be otherwise. (As an example of the absurdity of this, can
you name something that doesn’t satisfy the reflexive property? Can you
give me an example of an instance where transitivity fails? It is only when
one has an instance of something that doesn’t work need we give a name to
the phenomenon that does work. For example, why have the word “tall” if
there is no concept of shortness?)

HIGH SCHOOL: Do this weird set of tasks now because “they will be useful
later.” (Why on earth, exactly, would any beginning algebra and functions
f ( x + h) − f ( x)
student actually want to simplify ?)
h

THE GOAL OF THIS SITE

Given the constraints and demands of state-wide and national testing placed on the
subject today, it is not at all clear how to bring the full joyful spirit of mathematics
into the high school curriculum.

In this testing environment one has to deal a sad array of sillinesses: The perfectly
1
acceptable mathematical answer is rejected over the allegedly “simplified”
2
2
; the properties of 30-60-90 triangles are tested over and over again although
2
very few mathematicians could recite you their side ratios and very few students
realize that each is just half an equilateral triangle; joyless two-column proofs
abound even though no mathematician ever writes a proof that way!
But I want to take baby steps to make a change. That is why I left college teaching
to become a high-school teacher.

On this site I present a whole host of curriculum essays, more general

mathematical essays, and puzzlers. I offer books that cover the content of the
high school curriculum in a joyful and accessible way (with no sacrifice to rigor)
respectful of the beauty and wondrous creative nature of mathematics. I show how
even high-school mathematics can astound and delight, and how clean and
uncluttered key topics can be.

I seek clarity of understanding and freedom to think. I encourage the push of

boundaries and the willingness to explore. There is absolutely no shying away from
the whys and what ifs.

I want teachers and students to like mathematics, to understand mathematics and

to develop a sense of personal curiosity.

I want teachers and students to have fun and enjoy and appreciate and admire and
be willing to explore and play.

My baby steps towards these goals are the following:

STEP 1: Remove unnecessary clutter.

Even if the mathematics of quadratics is not particularly exciting, there is no need

to make it joyless! Understanding supersedes any need for memorizing. Perhaps
students - and teachers – prefer to memorize formulas for a sense of “safety.” But
memorization is far from lasting and does not speak to a sense of perspective and
understanding. It doesn’t provide a sturdy platform for play and investigation. And
it generally only allows you to answer questions others have already provided for
you (and have already answered in the back of the book!)

Let’s let go of the intellectual clutter of memorizing. If formulas happen to stick in

your mind, fine, but let’s not make that the goal.

And let’s let go of volumes of jargon! Only if a unique idea or situation presents
itself repeatedly we might want to give it a name. If it doesn’t, don’t bother naming
it! (And certainly don’t name something for the sake of naming it and nothing more!)

Here are three forms of an equation of a line:

 y = mx + b y − a = m ( x − b) Ax + By = C

These all have names (which, I personally, cannot recall).

Here are some more forms of equations of lines:

A B A− x
= y 2 = ax 2 λ=
y− p x−q B− y

These don’t have names. Hmmm. Maybe we need jargon for these too!

I’d rather have a student do something interesting with a quadratic than to

rearrange it in “vertex form” (whatever that is!), or have a student simply
rearrange an equation in some (unnamed) way of her choosing so that she can see an
easier why to address the question at hand.

STEP 2: Keep it simple

Mathematics at its best is simple. Mathematicians call this elegance. Seeing to the
core of a set of ideas reduces their study to a few key principles. And
understanding those key principles allows everything to fall into place.

Realising, for example, that a function of the form y = ax 2 + bx + c is just a

transformed version of the U-shaped graph y = x 2 , makes graphing quadratics
straightforward. (No need to memorise a vertex formula!) Realising that
multiplication by i has a geometric effect of a 90-degree rotation on points in the
plane makes playing with complex numbers easy and fun. Knowing that “sine” arose
as the height of a star at a certain angle makes trigonometry (which really should
be called “circle-ometry”) elegant and beautiful. And this business of “is order
relevant?” is unnecessary clutter: there is no fundamental difference between a
permutation and a combination!

The curriculum essays offered on this website home right in on the core ideas at
hand and bring simplicity of thought to particular high-school topics. The texts
available from this site do the same.

STEP 3: Let the math speak for itself

One of the greatest surprises – one that truly shocked and delighted
mathematicians - is a simple formula that unites trigonometry and complex
numbers, simplifying all of trigonometry in one fell swoop. Through a study of slope
one comes to realize that eix is cos x + i sin x in disguise. So often I have seen
teachers introduce this formula in an honors pre-calculus class as a “useful” formula
for computing complicated quantities without any hint from where this formula
might come or any hint as to why it might be true. It becomes a dry result
accompanied with 50 practice problems, some of which will be on the test. What
has happened to beauty, to surprise, to shock? The great Leonhard Euler was
dumbfounded by this result. So should be every person when she first encounters
it!

So … if we insist on teaching this “useful formula” in a pre-calculus course, then

let’s let it be a shock. Let’s talk about slope and shape a path of exploration that
allows this formula to inevitably fall into place just using the tools and techniques
at hand to the students. Let it creep up from behind and grab the intellect by
surprise! And let students enjoy the experience of surprise. The materials available
from this site show how such a path could be.

And there are many places in the curriculum (even in standard non-honors courses)
where we can naturally let the mathematics speak for itself. So why don’t we?
Beginning geometry speaks of “parallelism” yet it is interesting to note that Euclid,
the founder of geometry as we know it, never used the word “parallel” in his work.
Euclid deliberately avoided the term as a concept that is beyond human. (Can we
ever possibly check whether or not two lines are actually parallel?) He worked
instead on finding a local concept that would get at the heart of parallelism without
involving an infinite concept. Clever fellow! Why don’t we speak of this and explore
this with our students?

John Napier set out to help his scientific colleagues of the day by inventing a means
to convert multiplication problems, which are very hard to conduct by hand, to
simpler addition problems. His approach turned out to be very complicated in
theory, but easy to implement in practice, and he called his tools “logarithms.” It
wasn’t until 100 years later than mathematicians realized that logarithms are a very
simple concept in disguise! The math is elegant and straightforward, but the
complicated name remains. (And a complicated approach to teaching them remains
as well.)

So … Simply put, let’s let the math shine through.

The essays and materials included on this site show how.

JST 2009