Quote:
Originally Posted by ThePerfectHacker  One reason is that people who like to solve this do it for artistic reasons. They do it because they like to, they do it because the approach can be elegant and beautiful. In rare cases analytic solutions lead to generalizations that turn into theorems. I would say that most of mathematics have been created by people's own self-interest in solving problems that many would find "useless". |
Well, in the real world, productivity is key. Especially in the US. Being elegant and such is something to be done in your spare time. The classroom, however, should focus ALL of it's time and energy developing the next generation of problem solvers that can produce results; that can solve the CONTEMPORARY and RELEVANT problems facing humanity RIGHT NOW. If they can do it in an elegant way, cool, but I highly doubt that it would matter at all whether a mathematical model that depicts the way in which humans could reduce levels of greenhouse gases by one half in ten years was elegant.
I'm not bashing your statement. I love math. In my opinion, math is beauty. But im trying to keep the focus of the post.
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"Then thou carriedst thine ashes into the mountains:
wilt thou now carry thy fire into the valleys?"
Thus Spake Zarathustra
Friedrich Nietzsche
If you would like to know how the quadratic formula was derived, visit my post entitled:
Deriving the Quadratic Formula.