What is mathematics, really?

[S. Ali Ghasempouri]

Hello!

Could you please share your ideas about these questions?

>What is mathematics?

>What are its applications for kids?

>What are your expectations from mathematics education?

>How do you asses kids progress/advancement/development?

Cheers,

Ali.

[Bill Marsh]

Yesterday, Ali asked someone else to please share his or her ideas about some questions.  Here are my ideas about them.

>What is mathematics?

I'm strongly tempted to say, as Louis Armstrong said about jazz ,that if you have to ask you ain't never gonna know.  I have been interested and working in the foundations of mathematics for more than a half century, and I am hesitant about describing math and pretty sure that no-one can define it.  Two good starts on a description might be (1) an abstract science of some of the actions we can take on things in the world and (2) the study or science of patterns.

When I told a third grade class that mathematicians LOVED patterns, they said I sounded like Cookie Monster.  We agreed that mathematicians we pattern monsters.

>What are its applications for kids?

Irrelevant.  Math for kids should be interesting, fun and creative.  And for adults too, for that matter, though they probably also have uses for it.

>What are your expectations from mathematics education?

To have children like math and feel confident with it.

>How do you asses kids progress/advancement/development?

Talk with them.

Bill

[Alan Kay]

von Neumann said mathematics is "relationships about relationships"

I think of it as the art of "making representations and reasonings"

However, as with all languages, it is hermetic: it can only deal with things in itself. Science is the relationship between "what's out there?" and what we can devise to *represent* what we think is out there, drawn as much as possible from actual phenomena.

Metamath is fun because it can parallel the scientific process within the hermetically sealed universes of representations using mathematical representations themselves as phenomena (and with much less noise than the physical universe presents to us).

Cheers,

Alan

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From: Bill Marsh <billma...@gmail.com>
To: natur...@googlegroups.com
Cc: mathf...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, March 5, 2014 7:00 AM
Subject: [NaturalMath] Re: What is mathematics, really?

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[michel paul]

On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 2:39 PM, S. Ali Ghasempouri <ash.m...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello!

Could you please share your ideas about these questions?

>What is mathematics?

Well, according to Max Tegmark, mathematics is the universe!  : )

>What are its applications for kids?

Well, what is the universe good for? 

>What are your expectations from mathematics education?

That students come to appreciate the self-organizing beauty of the universe.

>How do you asses kids progress/advancement/development?

I like to ask both students and colleagues to justify their assertions.

Given some statement x, do you A) know it is true, B) believe it is true, C) not know, D) believe it is false, E) know it is false?

Sometimes the correct answer is C, because NO ONE knows. Example - Goldbach Conjecture. Seems like it's true, but do you know?

 

Cheers,

Ali.

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"What I cannot create, I do not understand."

- Richard Feynman

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"Computer science is the new mathematics."

- Dr. Christos Papadimitriou
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[Alice Lewis]

Math is always difficult for everyone and they want a shortcut to solve it, but some time it works but not to be every time,
so i have a solution for your problem ,feel free to visit our blog  and get your solution.
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