July 24, 2018 Tuesday
Bedtime Story
George Pólya and Heuristics in Mathematics
George Pólya, the Hungarian mathematician
(who held the position of professor both at the Stanford and ETH Zürich) in his
1945 book ‘How to Solve it’ lists out following more heuristic techniques that
needs to be told to all young minds:
(1.) If you are having difficulty
understanding a problem, try drawing a picture.
(2.) If you can’t find a solution, try assuming
that you have a solution and seeing what you can derive from that (“working
backward”)
(3.) If the problem is abstract, try
examining a concrete example.
(4.) Try solving a more general problem
first (this is also known as the inventor’s paradox; the more ambitious plan
may have more chances of success provided it is not based on a mere pretension
but on some vision of the things beyond those immediately present).
Here is an interesting aside about George Pólya.
He is one among the many Martians who are
present on the planet Earth.
Now you may wonder what kind of nonsensical
cock-and-bull story is this coming from the ape who is only interested in
either truths or facts.
So let me tell you the true story of how
these Martians came to be amongst us ordinary apes of the planet earth.
There used to be a Hungarian physicist and
an astrophysicist by the name of György Marx (whom passed away in 2002 after
serious illness in his place of birth Budapest, Hungary) who once wrote a book
titled The Martians.
György Marx was born in Hungary and
remained a Hungarian for his entire life (quite surprising) and spent some
years working at the Institute of Physics in London.
He is known primarily for two things: one
for being the first non-British laureate of the Bragg Medal of the institute of
Physics and secondly for discovering the Lepton numbers which I would not go
into now.
This astrophysicist Marx wrote a book
called ‘The Martians’ and I am going to quote a passage from it which will
throw some light on the subject of Martians.
“The universe is vast containing myriad of
stars, many of them not unlike our sun.
Many of these stars are likely to have
planets circling around them.
A fair fraction of these planets will have
liquid water on their surfaces and a gaseous atmosphere.
The energy pouring down from a star will
cause the synthesis of organic compounds, turning the ocean into a thin, warm
soup.
These chemicals will join each other to
produce a self-reproducing system.
The simplest living things will multiply,
evolve by natural selection and become more complicated till eventually active,
thinking creatures will emerge.”
The most interesting part of the abstract
of the book ‘The Martians’ will follow in the nights to come.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
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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