New 3QD-column: Tatiana Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa and Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis on intuition and abstract thought in math class.
“Am I ever going to use this later?” As a math teacher, I seem to be getting this question about once a month (which is actually less frequently than I would have predicted). It is asked with varying degrees of openness to the idea that a satisfying reply is even conceivable, but almost invariably by students who are probably justified in believing that their tertiary education or future career is going to involve preciously few linear equations indeed.
See here.