I have been following this blogger for a few
weeks now. He is a Mathematics professor at the University of Washington.
He defends the use of technology in school and in the mathematics classroom and
makes some very intelligent points.
This stood out to me the most:
“To me, mathematics is about solving problems by understanding them more
deeply, finding ways to explore them, finding elegant proofs, looking for ways
to visualize and compute with deep structure, etc. Math software is simply
another tool or technique that one can use to massively enhance one’s ability
to solve mathematical problems. Asking whether or not to use computer
technology in mathematics is no different than asking whether or not to use
“logical reasoning” or “linear algebra” or any other major tool in the
mathematician’s tool chest.”
And he is correct! Technology is used as a way of enhancing learning, not
cutting corners to find the answers. It is used to visualize, to understand,
and to explore.
His next great point brought up Carl Gauss, who is known as a mathematical
genius since he was a child.
“Gauss spent years counting the 216816 primes up to 3 million…and wrote in a
letter in 1849 that there are 216745 such primes. Any undergrad can type
‘pi(3*10^6)’ into Sage and get the right answer instantly.”
Why must we waste time on what is already proven? Using technology accelerates
the time spent on problems and simultaneously provokes new ideas. In
mathematics, there are things that are impossible (because it takes too much
time or is just too straining on the mind to solve.) If we are provided the
technology, why not use it? We are not here to re-do what too years for many
amazing mathematicians to do, our purpose is to expand on what they did and
create more.
Check out his blog!
http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2009/04/technology-in-mathematics-education.html
No comments:
Post a Comment