This entry was posted
on Tuesday, August 15th, 2006 at 10:25 am and is filed under Nerd Interest.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
5 Responses to “Is it possible to write a competent newspaper article about math?”
I liked the emphasis the article put on the IMO. If people in North America were more excited about it (and the IOI, of course), we would have fewer super-smart guys trying to set records for how fast you can finish highschool and college (essentially out of boredom).
-mip
I was also really impressed by this article. I work in a field that involves a lot of differential geometry/topology, and it’s a constant struggle to tell friends/family “what I do.” Even my grandma could understand what the Poincare conjecture and Ricci flows are about after reading this article. I thought their lay description of compactness was also fantastic. Well done, NYT!
What I really liked about the article, if anyone is still reading this thread, is that it accepted that pure mathematics is interesting for its own sake. It did not co-opt the math with physics, computer science, chaology, art, human interest, or math education.
Follow
Comment #1 August 15th, 2006 at 11:21 am
Yes! The Times has recovered its stride with this good article.
Comment #2 August 15th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
I liked the emphasis the article put on the IMO. If people in North America were more excited about it (and the IOI, of course), we would have fewer super-smart guys trying to set records for how fast you can finish highschool and college (essentially out of boredom).
-mip
Comment #3 August 16th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Yessss!!
Comment #4 August 16th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
I was also really impressed by this article. I work in a field that involves a lot of differential geometry/topology, and it’s a constant struggle to tell friends/family “what I do.” Even my grandma could understand what the Poincare conjecture and Ricci flows are about after reading this article. I thought their lay description of compactness was also fantastic. Well done, NYT!
Comment #5 August 19th, 2006 at 10:21 am
What I really liked about the article, if anyone is still reading this thread, is that it accepted that pure mathematics is interesting for its own sake. It did not co-opt the math with physics, computer science, chaology, art, human interest, or math education.