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"You never did math in high school" Yes I did. The claim is false. "I was always good at math." From the ninth grade on, yes. The main means of measurement were standardized tests of math ability and/or knowledge. I'll compare 'math' aptitude, knowledge, and accomplishments with you any time, any day, for money, marbles, or chalk. I'll give you a head start and big odds, and I will totally blow you away. F'get about my opinion. Instead, (1) in the ninth grade I was sent to a math tournament, (2) twice I was sent to NSF summer programs in math, (3) I was a math major in college and got 'Honors in Math' with a paper on group representation theory, (4) my MATH SAT score was over 750 both times (strong evidence of being "good at math"), (5) my CEEB math score was over 650, (6) I never took freshman calculus, taught it to myself, alone, started in college with sophomore calculus and made As, (7) got 800 on my Math GRE knowledge test (means I knew some math), (8) used the differential equation y' = k y (b - y) to save FedEx (a viral growth equation for revenue projections that pleased the Board and saved the company), i.e., an original application of math, (9) used the statistics of power spectral estimation of stochastic processes to 'educate' some customers and win a competitive software development contract, (10) did some original work in stochastic processes to answer a question for the US Navy on global nuclear war limited to sea, (11) studied solid geometry in high school and later used it, the law of cosines for spherical triangles, to find great circle distances in a program, I designed and wrote, to schedule the fleet at FedEx, a program that pleased the Board, enabled funding, and saved the company, (12) my Ph.D. research was in stochastic optimal control, complete with measurable selection, that is, 'math'. The claim is false, badly false. Finally, as you hint, we will end with original work done, and I will pull out two of my peer-reviewed published papers and my Ph.D. dissertation, and with what you wrote you won't have the prerequisites to read any of them. Then, you lose the bet. I feel sorry for your students. Go back to teaching the quadratic equation and binomial coefficients and f'get about your broad views of 'math'. |