Forum Outposts

The Geometry Forum Newsletter

Spring 1995, page 4

Why use dynamic software?

We have the Geometer's Sketchpad on our Macs in a schoolwide lab... Whether students are investigating the properties of quadrilaterals or playing with circles, this piece of software is great. In one of my early trips into the lab with an average geometry class (whatever that means), I was checking for understanding by asking my kids to tell me if diameters could be chords and chords diameters and if diameters could be radii, and one of my least motivated kids answered yes to all of the above. He constructed two circles, the radius of the first being the diameter of the others.

When he demonstrated this to the other kids, the 'bright' ones complained that I hadn't told them they could use two circles -- to which the kid responded that I hadn't said they couldn't. He was the star for the first time. On the next trip into the lab, I saw him reach over a neighbor's computer and say: "No, no, you do it this way." -- Art Mabbott

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Why math for all?

Why math for all? Easy. 1) We don't know who will be doing what; 2) we don't know how this situation will change with new technologies; 3) (and most important) math is good for you... if people see mathematical proof in its 'pure' form, whether it be connected with geometry or some other subject matter, they will be able to handle logical deduction better in 'real life', even if they don't use it on mathematical objects...

Bertrand Russell once defined mathematics as "the set of all statements of the form 'If A, then B'." Maybe this was said tongue-in-cheek. But there is some truth to it, and if so, the face of mathematics presents itself at every turn in life. -- Mark Saul

http://mathforum.org/~sarah/proving.the.obvious.html

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Sarah Seastone
26 March 1995