Musings of a half-crazed weazl » Random thoughts

The Lost Art of Mathematics

Dimwitweasel — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:34:55 +0000

One of my friends recently introduced me to an essay recounting some of the wrongs of our current education system, with regard to Mathematics. A Mathematician’s Lament, by Paul Lockhart, tells of a society that has taken an art form and utterly defiled it. Our beloved “Educational System,” with its standardized tests, set curriculum, and competitive goals, has removed true mathematics from the eduction process altogether, in favor of memorization and regurgitation. Gone are the days when students were challenged to come up with their own solutions to mathematical problems, no longer do students learn why 1 + 1 is equal to 2, or why the area of a triangle is one-half of its base multiplied by its height. Instead, we are told that it “just is,” “it doesn’t matter why, just memorize the formula, you’ll need it for the test.” No wonder students hate math class so much. Read the essay, its worth it.

Peace.

“Lockhart’s Lament” alternate link

Dreams

Dimwitweasel — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:41:33 +0000

Have you ever had one of those dreams that are so realistic that you don’t realize its a dream until you wake up? Yeah, had one of those this morning, but now I can’t remember it… Made me wonder though (and not for the first time…), what if Life itself is nothing but a dream –albeit extremely vivid– that I’m just waiting to wake up from? What if this entire existence is nothing but a figment of my unconscious mind?

A tad bit deeper, what if this entire existance is a figment of someone else’s unconscious mind? What if I’m just a character in someone else’s dream? What will happen to me when they wake up? Will I continue, waiting within their mind until they start to dream again, or will I cease to exist? Or perhaps I exist in a state of suspended animation while they go about their daily life, and pick up right where I left off when they sleep again…

Wow…

Dimwitweasel — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:08:12 +0000

I never thought that I’d get into this whole blogging thing… To be honest, I believed it to be a waste of time. I’ve never written a single journal entry in my entire life, and found the prospect of publishing bits of my daily life both pointless and frightening. Alas, here I am. I’ve become “one of them,” a blogger. What is this world coming to?

So here goes, my first rant…

What, exactly, is the purpose of Thursday? I mean, it’s just that boring time period between Wednesday and Friday… Think about it, Thursday really doesn’t serve any purpose greater than making the time between the middle of the week and the end of the weak the same as the time between the start of the week and the middle. Like someone decided that a week needed to have an odd number of days so that there was a distinct middle day, and they just happened to settle on Thursday.

Why couldn’t we just jump straight from Wednesday to Friday? Why prolong the weekend, it takes long enough to get here as it is…