Math History Tidbits: The Battling Bernoullis

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

July 27th is Alex’s birthday. She shares it with Johann Bernoulli, an irascible mathematician from the late 17th century. This coincidence intrigued her enough that she wrote a research paper on Johann and his mathematical brother, titled “Jeering Jacob and Jealous Johann.”

Of course, to make the alliteration work, she had to mispronounce Johann’s name — but she figured he kinda deserved that. Read the historical tidbits below to find out why one writer said the Bernoulli brothers were “the kind of people who give arrogance a bad name.”*

Continue reading Math History Tidbits: The Battling Bernoullis

Quotations XXIV: Probability

Posted on by Denise Gaskins


[Photo by Micah Sittig.]

I used to fill the margins of my math newsletter with quotations and tidbits of math history. Here are some quotes from the July/August 1999 issue on probability, along with a few others I’ve stumbled on while browsing the internet.

No knowledge of probabilities helps us to know what conclusions are true. There is no direct relation between the truth of a proposition and its probability.

— John Maynard Keynes

The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.

— Andy Rooney

Continue reading Quotations XXIV: Probability

Quotable: Teaching

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Teaching any subject has a funny way of educating the teacher at least as much as the student.

— Chris Birk
How I Became a Better Writer Thanks to Distracted, Hungover College Kids

We all know it already, but I like the way he said it, and the blog post is worth reading. I wish this guy was teaching my college kids. Heck, my college kids wish he was teaching them — or at least, they wish that their teachers valued tight writing and would “coat undergraduate papers in ink.”

Quotable: College Majors

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Discovered this in my blog reader this morning, and I thought you would enjoy it, too.
[Note: Stu is not the person’s real name, but is short for “student.”]

Stu came to my office looking for a new major. Stu is bad at math and can’t handle the math sequence required of business majors. So Stu was wondering what majors require the lowest level math sequence that counts towards graduation.

I listed a few.

Stu was disappointed. Stu pointed out that you don’t usually think about people in those fields as making a lot of money. Stu lamented that everything that is in demand requires math.

— Rudbeckia Hirta
Learning Curves blog

Free: Calculus Student’s Best Friend

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

calculus-made-easy

Considering how many fools can calculate, it is surprising that it should be thought either a difficult or a tedious task for any other fool to learn how to master the same tricks… Being myself a remarkably stupid fellow, I have had to unteach myself the difficulties, and now beg to present to my fellow fools the parts that are not hard. Master these thoroughly, and the rest will follow. What one fool can do, another can.

— Silvanus P. Thompson

For years, I have recommended Calculus Made Easy as summer reading (and future reference) for high school or college students headed into a calculus course — and for the parents of those students, who may have studied calculus in ages past and now need to dredge out the dust bunnies of memory so they can help with homework.

The original book (second edition) is now out of copyright and available for free online:

[Hat tip to Sam and Michael for finding the Scribd version, which set me off searching for a clearer copy.]