Memorable Maths
Kaskuser Kiss
The Maths Made Memorable website, developed by FE maths teacher and Advanced Practitioner Marsida Horeshka, offers a wide range of resources including videos, Q and A activities, ideas and a blog to support maths teaching and learning from Entry 1 to Level 2, including GCSE.
Given the vast number of new papers / preprints that hit the internet everyday, one factor that may help papers stand out for a broader, though possibly more casual, audience is their title. This view was my motivation for asking this question almost 7 years ago (wow!), and it remains equally true today (those who subscribe to arXiv feeds, MO feeds, etc., may agree).
The response to this question has been quite huge. So, what have I learned from it? A few things at least. Here is my summary of the obvious: Amongst the various "memorable" titles reported, some of the following are true:
I always remember the paper entitled "On groups of order one." It turned out the title referred to groups defined by generators and relations, so the problem was to determine when a set of elements (together with its conjugates) generated a free group. I cannot imagine any mathematician who would not look at this paper to see what it was about.
About 1-2 decades ago Sylvain Cappell and Shmuel Weinberger planned writing a book called "A piece of the action" about group actions. This is a memorable title but I think the book was not completed.
Branko Grunbaum has a paper entiled "The importance of being straight" (I could not find a link), and Irit Dinur and Shmuel Safra have a paper entitled "On the importance of being biased". (A link to a later version with a different title.)(There is a paper by A. Dillof published in Michigan Law Review with very similar name.)
And in a similar vein, a quote from "Quotients homophone des groupes libres - Homophonic quotients of free groups," that appears on the first linked page page: "Ah, la recherche! Du temps perdu."
When I was in tenth grade, I remember going into math class one day somewhat frustrated, I guess, since we had to learn the quadratic formula that day. I know I am a person who forgets things quite easily, so i was like this is going to be a bad day for me. But instead of it being bad it was good for me. My teacher played the quadratic formula song for about half of the 45 minutes we were in class, and on the bus ride home I remember the song completely. To this day i only remember a little bit of it, but in math class i will always remember the quadratic formula now.
AP Chemistry is notorious around the country for being one of the most difficult AP subjects, and at my high school it was no different. However, at my school, things were a little different. My AP Chemistry teacher had made it clear to us from the first day of school that we would be successful in both the course and the challenging exam at the end of the year, and she was right. She had the ability to make us believe in ourselves by being the most committed and confident teacher from which I have ever had the pleasure of learning. I can remember staying after school for hours with my classmates preparing for the endless tests and rigorous labs, with my teacher present. This commitment allowed the class to develop a quasi-competitive, and wholly collaborative dynamic. We all pushed each other throughout the year, and it paid off. We were all successful, just as she had promised on the first day of school. I am now a student studying Chemical Engineering at Northwestern University, and everyday I am reminded of the excellent work of my high school AP Chemistry teacher. Science and engineering is more collaborative than ever before, and the lessons I learned in high school not only benefit my performance, but also enhance my experiences and passion for science. I firmly believe that the commitment and confidence exhibited by my teacher should be put into practice by science and math teachers across the country to ensure that a passion for these subjects fosters the next generation of great scientists and engineers in the United States.
When I was in 8th grade my science teacher really changed my view on Science as a subject. She made me more eager to learn about the different science subjects, like astronomy, earth science and chemistry. That year has changed the way that I study and learn about science even today. It changed my work ethics and even my grades to a degree. Looking back I may not remember everything that I was taught to learn about like songs and movies, but I will always remember the formulas and facts that were in those songs and movies that were drilled into me day after day so that we would remember them. I also will always remember the study skills that I learned in her class like the right ways to approach a lab or test. All and all 8th grade science for me changed my academic life for the better,
One memorable moment in my STEM education was when I was hired by the New York Hall Of Science as an Explainer Trainee. Working there has increased my interest in the STEM field, seeing that it is a STEM- centered career field. Because of the experience that I have had at the New York Hall of
Science, I have realized that I would like to study mechanical engineering in college. In the process of learning that I wanted to become a mechanical engineer I focused more on my mathematics and science courses. That is my memorable moment in my STEM education.
My high school physics teacher was terrific. You never knew what day the next short snap quiz would be. They counted as part of your final grade. Most everyone everyday got to class way before the bell rang.
In a high school like mine, bright minds are selected and thrust together in a small space. As one would imagine, this creates intense competition. This determination to best those around you makes students reach outside their educational realms and search for something to focus their talents on. With this exploration came, for me, an unexpected love for the intricacies and perplexities of STEM research. Therefore, when I look at my educational experience (as an objective third party), it becomes clear that there is no single moment one can remember that taught him something. He who, upon finding no SINGLE memory, searches for the one moment, never truly experienced the wonders of the STEM fields. Instead, it is he who finds culmination of atmosphere, competition, curiosity, and drive, who has.
For me, the value of the STEM fields does not only lie in the material they teach us (mathematics, technology, engineering, and the sciences), but in the life skills they provide and the passion they instill.
There is no single MOMENT to look back on that will cause a student to truly appreciate STEM education, but each student who does, as I do, values sitting at a computer and researching for hours on end as much as they cherish hearing their name called in honor of their research.
I always want for everything in my life to be concrete. By this, I mean that I want things to always have a precise answer and to never be too broad of a topic. However, throughout my middle school experience, I have learned that science is all around me. If someone asked me to list everything in the world involving science, I would never be able to complete the list. There are an infinite number of science relations in the world, from the way we move, to the way the Earth rotates. I have always loved science, but this has been a difficult concept for me. Though, along with the help of my science teachers, I have managed to accept the idea that science is not tangible. Now, I have learned to embrace and adore this concept, thanks to my teachers.
I was in seventh grade and we were in the middle of expo ( our science fair). The class was building a renewable and eco-friendly city and my group was in charge of electricity. We had wired all the cords to our three foot tall building and were warming up a solar lamp to see if our lights would work. As my partner, Mamie, was holding the heat lamp it started getting really hot. In a few minutes, the heat lamp had burned a huge hole through her thick cotton sweatshirt! She was very disappointed, but we were all ecstatic when we found out that the lights worked and we had used solar power to power a building! We did this buy attaching solar panels to the top of our building and attaching alligator clips from the wires of the solar panels to the lightbulb. We shone a solar lamp over the panels and to our amazement they worked! I will never forget the day that we used solar power to light up a building!
Through out elementary school I had always thought Science was the most boring subject. However, once I reached Middle School that all changed. In seventh grade I had Mr. Twardowski as my Science teacher and he is the reason why I love Science so much now. He always made the class fun and kept all of the students attention for the full 42 minutes. He opened my eyes to so many things and inspired me to appreciate every little thing that surrounds us. One thing I will never forget about his class is an experiment he let us do which was to make glow sticks. Even though that may not sound like a big deal now, in seventh grade is was pretty cool. He always demonstrated and assigned experiments that were relevant and useful to our age group. He turned what I thought was the most boring subject into my favorite subject. I now envy chemists and physicists because of their talents and dedication for what they do. Science is such an amazing field to look into and it is not restricted into just a few things. When talking about Science, the sky is the limit and any person would be amazed at how thought-provoking it can be and how truly fascinating the world that we live in is. Science is a never ending learning experience and there is still so much out there to be discovered and because of Mr. Twardowski, I am motivated to explore beyond my boundaries and use Science as a guide to exploring the world.
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