9 Strategies for Motivating (HIGH SCHOOL) Students in Mathematics

[AlexFekken]

(07-09-2017 03:10 AM)Garth Wilson Wrote:  What's the point in math without the application?

Thanks for proving my point. Stamping out the short-sighted idea that mathematics (and other intellectual activities) only deserve to exist to serve some other purpose is exactly what that might achieve.

E.g. rather than telling the (probably untrue) story of Gauss adding the numbers from 1 to 100, a much better illustration of how mathematics works and interacts with science is the proven fact that he did not publish his work on non-Euclidean geometry because, finding no application (apparently because he could not measure the curvature of space), he thought it was not worth it. We should know better nowadays.

Perhaps your idea of "math" is as a collection of applied (typically brain-dead, mechanical) calculations. And I agree that that needs to be taught as an important toolkit. But it is not mathematics as mathematicians see it, just as (most cases of) folding paper planes isn't engineering. And I think proper mathematics should be taught as well.