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Schools would be greatly improved if there were more Arthur Benjamins
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Harvey Mudd College has consistently ranked high in Princeton Reviews of the best colleges, and scores particularly well in the areas of this review having to do with professor ratings and professor accessibility. One suspects that a salient reason for this is Arthur Benjamin. Arthur Benjamin is a Professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College who has a passion for interesting people in the joys of mathematics. Now that half of you are done rolling your eyes, take a look at this:
Arthur Benjamin is a professor of Mathematics at Harvey Mudd and when we interviewed him about what it is like to interest persons in mathematics he offered this:
it's full of really beautiful ideas that will appeal to the creative side of many students. Mathematics is, after all, the science of patterns, and it's far easier to appreciate these patterns with discrete mathematics than with continuous mathematics. A lecture or two on the beauty of Pascal's triangle or Fibonacci numbers can instill a passion for mathematics, even among people who didn't think they liked math.
He also mentioned that his goal was to:
to bring mathematics to the masses. For more people to get a feeling of pleasure with mathematics, whether it be mental arithmetic or more advanced mathematics.
One of the interesting courses that you can take through the Teaching Company is Arthur Benjamin's The Joy of Mathematics. In this course you can learn first hand what is so beautiful about Fibonacci numbers while Arthur Benjamin opens up a world of incredible correlations with integers that will forever alter the way you view the subject of mathematics. We enjoyed this course very much and recommend it to you here.
You will have noticed in the quote above that we are discussing the difference between focusing on discrete mathematics as opposed to continuous mathematics. This is because the presentation that Arthur gave at TED that is viewable above comes from a few years ago, while this year he returned to TED with an idea worth sharing: namely that mathematics education in the United States should shift its focus from emphasizing calculus as the pinnacle accomplishment to emphasizing statistics. For a fuller discussion of this very interesting idea, please click here.
While some performers claim a kind of supernatural assistance in their shows that are demonstrated by their use of numbers, and while other performers utilize the mystique of savant-ism to interest spectators in their shows; Professor Benjamin does not claim either of these. Rather, in a book that is co-authored by Michael Shermer, Arthur demonstrates that complex mathematical problems can be broken down into easier problems and that with a little practice the techniques that he uses can be mastered by students of mathematics.
Arthur Benjamin's enthusiasm for mathematical concepts and principles is contagious. While the purpose of this brief bio is to furnish the article regarding Arthur's suggestion for American mathematics education, it is obvious that another improvement in education in any subject in any country would be if teachers shared this kind of passion for their subjects with their students.
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