February 13, 2017 Monday
Bedtime Story
Why Mathematics Though Mimics a Chess Game Yet Remains the Queen of Sciences
Nothing can be better than making a child curious.
Of course, arousing curiosity in an adult is far more strenuous
task, more so if they are educated and successful.
Just to support this silly statement of mine with some smart
brainy quote let me echo the words of Einstein:
“I have no special talent.
I am only passionately curious.”
Poincare’s Prize led me to read more and more about mathematics,
but even more about the mathematicians themselves.
I used published articles, you tube videos and more books to
venture into a field that we all hold in trepidation.
As I read, the writer in me got aroused and I wanted to write on
mathematics and mathematicians, no matter how superfluously and facile my words
came out.
After all, it is better to have committed to the paper (or in my
case, the word document) something than to not have written at all.
The more I wrote, the more I had to read and think about it; and
the more I read and thought, the more the desire to inscribe it down in my own
words these stories.
So here we are with these bedtime stories that are obviously very
childish, amateurish and sometime even jejune, yet they are there in black and
white.
The story of mathematics does not culminate in mathematics.
The absolutely useless questions that mathematicians pose for
themselves suddenly began to have far reaching implications, way beyond what
was even remotely intended.
This happens so because mathematicians can think way ahead of time
and it takes ages for physics and experimental technology to catch up with
them.
It is this that excited me, that as I ventured into mathematics, I
had to enter the arena of mathematical logic.
Mathematical logic in turn very unintentionally but
incontrovertibly leads us to the world of computing and eventually computers
that are indispensable to us modern apes.
I have written a bit about mathematics and logic, and now I will
take you to the world of computing.
What was most revealing and thus exulting was this unbelievably intimate
relationship between the most useless questions posed by mathematicians or
mathematical logicians and computing and intelligence.
So let me share this ecstatic moment of discovery with you.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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