[cmath] Re: [Cmesg-l] Fwd: Good article for promoting pure math research

[Peter Taylor]

Thanks Ed.
I am wary of abusing large list-serves with extended discussions, but 
it is July after all and the four wells story was a good one.  Every 
so often an "elementary" problem gets mathematicians talking all over 
the world (the car and two goats was one of those as you well know) 
but so was the four wells.  I recall it being 
enthusiastically  discussed both at CMS and CMESG.  It is a striking 
problem and the general solution is even more striking.  For many 
years after that I used it as a fine high school problem. For those 
who don't know it, I have a write-up on my website:
http://www.mast.queensu.ca/~peter/inprocess/fourwells.pdf
For the historical record, I might as well identify a few of the 
characters in my account of one of the sessions: "Katharine" is Tony 
and Joan Geramita's daughter, "Sumit" is Kirti Oberi's son, and 
"Andrew" is Andrew Irwin, recently Head of Math at Mt. Allison.
peter



At 10:30 AM 18/07/2011, barbeau at math.toronto.edu wrote:
> >
> >
> > Peter,
> >
> > thank you very much for this
> >
> > Some of the stories/case studies I know about, and always talk about them
> > to my students. Now I know more stories!
> >
> > Important message -- for students, as well as for teachers, math
> > curriculum people, etc. -- is that not every piece of math
> > needs to be (or can be) justified by some (present-day, "real life")
> > application.
> >
> > There is huge value in learning about (and researching) areas of math that
> > seem to be "purely abstract/theoretical" or "non applicable."
> >
> > Cheers
> > Miroslav
> >
>Indeed. Some of the best mathematics, in terms of students learning what
>we would really like them to know about the subject and how to approach
>it, comes through recreations and nice problems. It is this aspect that
>impelled a lot of Eastern European success in mathematics before the
>decline of Communism. Peter, do you remember the rotating table problem
>(from Russia circa 1980)? I also remember your doing a workshop on the
>number of ways of building a train with cars of two separate lengths. Ed
>Barbeau

Peter Taylor
Professor
Dept Math&Stats
Queen's University
Kingston ON K7L 3N6
613 533-2434
http://www.mast.queensu.ca/~peter/