Monthly Archives: December 2008

Learning and Unlearning Mathematics

Posted on 2008/12/31 by

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge. — Daniel Boorstin One of the challenges facing anybody who is learning something new is that you always start from somewhere already.  What’s already there may either … Continue reading →

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Walter Warwick Sawyer, 1911-2008

Posted on 2008/12/27 by

This year, a hero of mine passed away. You can find an obituary here: w.w. sawyer obituary. I encountered W.W. Sawyer when I was a young teenager, through one of his books on mathematics. I have since collected as many … Continue reading →

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Mathematics as a Rich Inheritance

Posted on 2008/12/24 by

Much of what we think of as mathematics, from the arithmetic we learned in elementary school to the way we write numbers, the way we draw graphs, the way we write equations, all this and more has been passed down … Continue reading →

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