January 25, 2013

A Mathematician's Lament by Paul Lockhart

This is a wonderful and heartfelt book about the poetry of mathematics and how we fail to introduce it to students at schools and to society in general. I can finally stop feeling guilty about my obsession with popular math books and cool problems even though I know they probably have no practical value to me or to society whatsoever. After all it is not practical value that makes reading poetry a pleasure! I am thankful to all my wonderful math teachers who bequeathed me this guilty pleasure without my knowledge or consent in spite of the horrible curriculum, text books, and test system. And I highly recommend the author's second book "Measurement" to those who seek an alternative to the typical 10 pound high school textbooks full of repetitive and unimaginative problems.

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