New Scientist puzzle-setter Rob Eastaway is featured on the NCETM website in a three-part essay on ‘joined-up mathematics’, the first two instalments of which are online.
Eastaway’s essay is required, and fun, reading for anyone following the directions that maths and science education are taking, with the emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM) and the sometimes forced emphasis on making maths relevant.
Eastaway is an evangelist for the understanding that maths is beautiful and fascinating in its own right and the essay conveys that. Read about the joys of maths puzzles in the first part (‘Maths That Connects to Everyone’, here), which includes one of my favourite maths stories, illustrating the rarefied pleasures available to better minds than my own:
Even the greatest mathematical minds take an interest in the subject’s recreational side. G.H. Hardy told the story of a visit he made to the mathematical genius Ramanujan, who was ill in hospital. Looking for something to open the conversation, Hardy mentioned that he had travelled in a taxi with the number 1729, which he thought seemed rather dull. “No,” replied Ramanujan, “it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.” (1729 = 1^3 + 12^3 and also 9^3 + 10^3.)Â
Genius!
Find out about rabbits, darts and beautiful bodies in the second part (‘Joined Up Maths: Real and Contrived’), here. The third instalment should be online before long.
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[...] part 3 of Rob Eastaway’s excellent three part essay on maths and teaching (which we featured earlier in the year), and it’s now [...]