The Green Cup

As we were driving to my wife’s family’s house on the morning of Christmas Eve we stopped and went inside a mall and bought a few last minute Christmas presents. There was a bookstore. Being educators, my wife and I decided to get books as some of the presents.

When the cashier rang us up we had four bargain books and they told me that there was a special on; I could have one more bargain book for free. It took me about nine seconds to decide. I’d thought about the book already – right there at eye level on the bargain rack…

I grabbed Ian Stewart’s The Story of Mathematics: from Babylonian Numerals to Chaos Theory.

My wife looked at me: “That’s it? You’re going to get that?” She called me a geek.

Later that evening I was browsing. I read a section on the Pythagorean cult that I found interesting.

Everyone has heard of Pythagoras. And his theorem (which we won’t talk about here). Pythagoras was a philosopher at a time when philosophy and religion weren’t very different things. He believed that numbers provided the key to understanding the universe. As part of that belief, Pythagoras and his followers believe that every length could be expressed as a ratio in comparison to other lengths. This made the universe a convenient place, at least mathematically.

Enter Hippasus. Hippasus figured out that this particular belief was false. He proved that some numbers couldn’t be expressed in terms of a ratio. In other words, he discovered irrational numbers. He made the mistake of announcing his findings at to a group of Pythagoreans while they were in a boat together out on the Mediterranean Sea. They were so upset with him that they threw him out of the boat and let him drown. At least that’s one version of the story…

It should be noted that the Pythagorean philosophical beliefs were considered controversial and were persecuted to the point that many of them fled to Egypt. On one occasion, 50 Pythagorean were slaughtered in a single location.

The moral of the story for Hippasus? Never announce your belief in a heresy while riding in a boat.

And maybe I am a geek…

Barack Obama released details today on his plans for an economic package – and schools in America stand to benefit greatly.

From President-elect Obama, on December 6: “[M]y economic recovery plan will launch the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen. We will repair broken schools, make them energy-efficient, and put new computers in our classrooms. Because to help our children compete in a 21st century economy, we need to send them to 21st century schools.”

I’m guessing that many rural schools in America are in the same boat as the one I work in. We have a coal furnace system that pumps water to radiators throughout our building. It is impossible to control the climate in individual classrooms. Some rooms are 82° while other rooms are 67° . And the custodian’s schedule seems to revolve around maintaining the fire in the furnace.

While 21st Century hardware is nice, our school (and, I think, our state) is fairly far along in the trip down that path. What we really need is to reconcile curriculum demands to 21st Century needs – bring keyboarding skills into the classroom at an earlier age and present students with more opportunity to simply read on a computer screen (as opposed to using the computer as a tool to complete some particular assignment).