When I was at uni, I did a subject called "Perspectives on Elementary Mathematics." There was nothing elementary about it really, it was university level maths. It was very 'out there' in some of the concepts but it really made you think (apparently the perspective we were meant to get was of a child struggling with using mathematical concepts).
One of the problems we looked at was "A round peg fits better into a square hole than a square peg fits into a round hole" and I think of this assignment every time someone comments about square pegs and round holes.
Tonight Peta made a comment that had me looking back at the assignment and reworking the maths of the problem, as I seemed to remember that I had noticed a mistake after I got the assignment back (that the lecturer hadn't noticed when he marked it). After going through it a couple of times, I found that there was no mistake and that the result holds true "showing that a square peg fits better into a round hole than a round peg fits in a square hole."
No comments:
Post a Comment