A bag of chips – Math stuff… and books…

This is a completely off topic post but I added the “–and a bag of chips” to the blog description to allow myself to write these:)

I just came across an article about teaching binary to 3rd graders, through something called the Socratic method, and it’s just an amazing read. Hmm… wonder if I can apply this on my 3 year old daughter:)

As you probably could have guessed I have a special place in my heart for pure mathematics (proofs, deduction etc.). It sorta goes hand in hand with debugging…

… so I have to recommend Simon Singh for anyone who hasn’t read his books. In Fermat’s last theorem and The code book he covers some really in-depth topics in a fun way and you don’t need to know hardly any math to understand them. After reading them you’ll know the basics of anything from RSA encryption to quantum theory along with stories about the lives of some of the great mathematicians like Pythagoras. Great cocktail party topics if you have cocktails with geeks:)

In the same way John Allen Paulos tackles statistics. His books Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper talk about things like “why are people so afraid of flying when more people die in car crashes on their way to and from the airport than in actual airplane crashes”, i.e. how people get tricked by media etc. because they don’t stop to apply common sense and question what they hear. Makes you watch the news and listen to peoples stories much more skeptically:)

Back to debugging…