| Last time | Next time |
Today:
and their work can be found here, on our wiki.
I will look to the captain to shepherd this group. You will have to play this role at most once.
I'll be sending out an email, putting you all in contact with each other.
I would like you, as a group, to select three examples from each category (you may not choose your own) to spotlight. No large cash prizes, I'm afraid; but let us know what you liked about them especially; or why you chose to put the focus on them.
I'm going to ask you to read two short pieces by Devlin, then watch a video to which he gave two thumbs up. I think that you'll enjoy it.
Some of you mentioned Fibonacci in your "Beauties": Devlin has written a book on Fibonacci. But he's written a lot of books!
The first reading is called "Letter to a Calculus Student": it's about the beauty in calculus (his "Ode to the definition of the derivative"); so it serves as a bridge from last week's to this week's topic.
The second is about the power of "representations" (and I'm most sorry that he sorta bashes something Madison found beautiful!). On a more positive note, Devlin points us to James Tanton, and his Exploding Dots!
James shows us how to conceive of different bases, algebra as arithmetic, the geometric series as infinite algebra, and the Fibonacci numbers as infinite dots -- all with exploding dots! Very entertaining.
We'll probably try to invite this guy to campus -- hopefully this fall. I'm working on it. Let me know if we should, after you've seen him in action!
