posted
I was thinking of having my sixth graders write one page reports on famous mathematicians, and one of their discoveries.
I am looking for ones that are accessible to sixth graders. They don't have to understand the math completely, but they have to have an idea of what they did.
posted
Sorry -- all the ones I'm thinking of are kinda past 6th-grade. Cauchy, Lebesgue, Riemann, Stiljes, Peano (unsure of spellings)....
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posted
Four good choices, all of which I have taught sixth graders about, are Pythagoras, Archimedes, Gauss, and Fermat. Euclid works too, come to think of it.
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I was just thinking that Hatrack is at the moment for me less a scene of intense social and political comment and more of a place to try out one-liners and try to smother the cynical, amused voice currently giggling in my head.
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posted
oh - because I don't believe in it. I don't believe in being cynically amused at a world that I am not attempting to build. Maybe some other time, but at the moment, I do not need to be more snarky, but instead more Making. Also, I am philisophically opposed to the elitism inherent in sniggering - agree or disagree, but don't dismiss.
Now, what I do and what I believe in are sadly light years apart, especially at the moment. Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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I actually think I'm proof against flaming. I think the long-time posters eventually go through a baptism by fire - if not at the beginning, then at some moment later when it's apparent that despite general love and concern and liking, there's always going to be serious opposition, and of all who said they loved you, few mean it enough or are sensitive enough to still love you even when you don't deserve it.
That happened to me back when Olivet and I were mud-wrestling. Laugh if you'd like, but it was actually a wrenching experience. (There was other stuff going on in my life.) I even stopped posting under my own name. Still, I liked Hatrack, work was still slow and sometimes boring, and my family was still incommunicado and I was still fighting with roommate, so I didn't leave. Having gone through that, I don't think a giant flaming would ever convince me to leave now. Hatrack is just my on-line community - like an old friend. Even if you don't talk to old friends, they are still there. It's okay to not talk for a while.
What if everyone changed? Completely? Well... I don't think Tom will ever completely leave, but I'd hope the character of the community would be the same. If it were, I think I'd still hang around.
--
The things right now - nothing big. Acutally, life is pretty good right now. I'm probably going to be moving, dating life proceeding nicely and almost as slowly as I would like, found a few mostly real people, have a new idea for a painting, going to Hawaii in a few weeks, going to see General Conference in Salt Lake soon, and, best of all, had a fabulous, fabulous talk with father recently where he promised to try and put me on the not-okay-to-yell-at list. Unfortunately, it took me yelling at my stepmother for my dad to pay enough attention to have that talk, but still. It was nice!
I just don't think I'm the person I wish I were, and I'm trying to figure out how much of that I need to give up trying to be, and how much is achievable, and how much is worth the effort. The person I want to be isn't remotely cynical. *thinks* I don't think that was ever me.
posted
I did a report on Euler in the Eighth grade. The knight's tour really facinated me, so much so that I developed two (32 total permutations.)
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
There's also the guy who was in People Magazine when he solved Fermat's last theorem, and Nash. The fact that these people are alive and briefly famous might engage them, though their stuff isn't as accessible.
I think someone said Descartes. Also Kepler is interesting because of the barrels. Who are the two guys who invented Calculus about the same time? Man, I am losing it. Or it is getting redirected.
kat- I think you rock Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I think that it would be problematic to ask sixth-graders to talk about a "pure mathematician" from any time in the last century. Let's be honest: how many adults have any concept of Fermat's Last Theorem anyway? I expect that there are far more at Hatrack than in an average group of adults, but you get the idea. Most pure mathematicians are now so deep in their field that their breakthroughs are nearly inscrutable to anyone without graduate-level experience.
I think most of the suggestions on this thread are on the right track, because they mention people who put math to work. I may not understand Einstein's theories, but his importance is magnified when you understand how his ideas opened the door for the Manhatten Project.
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posted
I really like Martin Gardner, though I don't know if he counts. He's the one that introduced me to lots of the most fun math games ever. He's just cool!
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posted
Ana - try reading The Night is Large by Martin Gardner. It's a collection of his essays. If you thought the math games were fun, see how much he knows about the rest of the sciences, especially physics!
Edited because I thought there used to be code for underlining, but when I tried it, it didn't work.
posted
That sounds great! I will look for it. I love all his stuff I've read. So full of wit and cleverness and fascinating insights.
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posted
Pascal was really cool. I love Pascal's triangle.
Oh and who was that dude who lost his head in the French Revolution because of ill-advisedly deciding to try being a tax collector for a couple of weeks? He was cool too! Click and Clack claim he invented the whoopie cushion. What was his name?
Here is something about Sophie Germain, who was quite interesting.
Another one who was really great was Archimedes. He figured out everything! I don't care about these people's lives so much as the cool stuff they came up with, so I don't know what sort of biographical information is available but who cares? <laughs> Their ideas are what was so great about them anyway.
[ September 27, 2003, 09:52 PM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
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Turing is a great choice, and a fantastic story, but could cause problems if GradStudent is working in a very conservative area, because of his homosexuality and his suicide. And yet, leaving those aspects of his life out seems very inappropriate, because his is a story about a hero wronged through closed-minded injustice. It seems wrong to gloss over that.
Taberah, the really cool thing about Fermat is that sixth-graders can understand the problem! (I know, because I've taught it specifically to sixth-graders!) Of course, they can't understand the solution that was finally found--heck, I can't understand it! But it's a great problem because it feels so "solvable" (soluble??). It's not too atypical for kids to receive their first exposure to Pythagoras's theorem at this age. It's not too much of a stretch to go from there to pythagorean triples, like 3-4-5, 5-12-13, 8-15-17, etc. From there, it's not hard at all to conjecture about the existence of integer solutions to equations of the form a^n + b^n = c^n, and to verify the difficulty of finding integer solutions when n>2 through guess-and-check. The fact that the problem does not involve terribly involved mathematics is what made it oh-so-tantalizing for centuries.
Kids love hearing about the note on the margin, speculating about whether or not Fermat actually had a proof (if he did, it was indubitably different from the one that was presented) and hearing all of the many stories of the search for the solution, such as the 1,000,000 (or was it 100,000) franc reward, and people whose lives were consumed by the search for this proof.
And it's a great opportunity to give kids a very distant look at what proving is all about.
posted
AK, Johnny, try Gardner's Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener amazon link. The most accessible book on philosophy I have ever read. Gardner has the very rare talant of writing about complex subjects readably without dumbing down the material. Asimov is the only other writer I can think of who equals him in that. Or as this reviewer wrote:
quote: His work reveals a clarity and ease of style that most writers would kill for
From a review of The Night is Large. Gradstudent, I've seen some good ideas here. Taberah is right, it would be difficult to find 20th century mathematicians whose work 6th graders could grasp. I suggest subjects like number theory, geometry, basic toplogy that start off accessable for young students. Some ideas:
Gauss (my favorite mathematician): many number theory results, modulo arithmatic, most proud of solving the 17-gon with compass rules (it's on his tombstone)
Euler: founding topologist, bridge or network problems, 4-color problem for maps on a plane
Archmedes: Archemede's principle, other results, killed by Roman soldier in famous incident
Galilao: many early mathematical physics experiments, ex-communicated by the Church (they recently welcomed him back into the fold, in the 70s I think!)
Newton: many results all through math, plus he was a really strange man with many odd habits
Cantor: his diagonalization proofs may be accessible, also odd, speculation he was bipolar
Galois:a founder of group theory, at least definition of groups understandable, killed in a duel at a young age
Calculator: a minor medieval mathematician, but kids will love his name--I've tried and failed to gooogle him--Also there is a European and Arabic Calculator, the Arabic man being more influential
the ancient proof of an infinitude of primes, very explainable, don't think it has attribution. Euclid??
Okay, he was a physicist and not a mathematician, but I highly reccomend his book, Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman. I read it the first time through in 5th or 6th grade and got a huge kick out if it.
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posted
WP, Feynman is a big hero of mine as well. I don't think you can stretch the definition of mathematician to cover him, though.
Oh, I'm pretty sure it was Euclid on the infinitude of the primes! And I forgot Cantor's diagonal argument! That's too cool!
All the number theory guys were super fun! Did someone talk about Goldbach's conjecture yet? (Sorry for missing your Archimedes post, Icky. Consider him seconded and thirded. )
Kurt Goedel, although his proof is probably above the level that these kids could understand. Still he was cool!
[ September 30, 2003, 03:15 AM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
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