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April 10, 2006
Mathematics is for Beauty and Clarity and Science and Engineering
I like Andy Rooney. I agree with Andy Rooney far more often than I disagree with him. In last night's 60 Minutes rant I agreed with everything he said until these last few words,
Mathematics is just for counting the money.
Now I think this was a joke because his piece was a complaint about the evils of a test driven education, particularly a test driven education that focuses only on reading and mathematics.
But I am afraid that too many people think of narrow-minded practicality when they think of mathematics. And of course, it has that role. Even in this age of computer based financial management, everyone needs enough mathematics to keep track of his affairs. However, at a different level mathematics is an integral part of what Rooney called the "common knowledge that keeps our civilization together" and as such it joins Rooney's civilizing subjects of science, art, geography, music and history.
Beyond this, more and more of our private and political lives involve statistical considerations. Many political considerations from climate change due to global warming driven by human activity to how to deal with immigration to our place in the biosphere are informed by statistical and therefore mathematical considerations. Nearly everyone, from our politicians to a used car dealer, cites some supposed statistic or formula in support of their goal. We need to know how to evaluate these mathematically if we are to survive in this world.
And if it is wondrous beauty you desire, little can beat the intricacies of a well-formed differential equation or a finely structures logical proof.
Now Andy is aware of all this. For he tells us,
We're going to raise a generation of cultural idiots - people who don't know Beethoven from Mozart, Cezanne from Van Gogh, or Albert Einstein from Charles Darwin.
Who could ever hope to understand Einstein without understanding mathematics? And who could hope to understand modern evolutionary science, the intellectual child of Darwin, without mathematics? And even our appreciation of Beethoven, Mozart, Cezanne and Van Gogh can be enhanced through a more subtle and complete understanding of mathematics.
Yes, Andy, mathematics is for counting money but it is also for beauty and clarity of thought and science and engineering and even politics. But, like Andy Rooney, I am afraid that all this testing saps much of that beauty out of the young spirits at the very time they need to be instilled with its wonder.
Posted by DuaneSmith at April 10, 2006 10:18 AM | Read more on Odds and Ends |
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