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QED – Reflections of a math
fashion victim 
 
Towards the end of his celebrated autobiography that was published in 1976, mathematician StanislawUlam makes a striking remark about the way mathematics is presented:‘(…) This was more agreeable than the present style of the research papers or books whichhave so much symbolism and formulae on every page. I am turned off when I see onlyformulas and symbols, and little text. It is too laborious for me to look at such pages notknowing what to concentrate on. I wonder how many other mathematicians really read them indetail and enjoy them.’
i
 To wit, these are the words of someone who really has enjoyed mathematics and has been engaged inthe highest ranks of the subject for almost all of his life.For me this is quite a relevant statement, since I started studying mathematics at the University of Leiden (The Netherlands) in the year 1975. And for me it was like Ulam describes. Lectures inmathematics almost entirely involved the stating of theorems and the subsequent proofing of them.Little was said about the meaning of what was proofed, why it would be interesting, or even what theessential idea of a proof was; most of the time no background or context of any kind was given. Asemester of Lebesgue integration theory was given without even referring to the problems that hadarisen with more basic forms of integration like the Riemann-Stieltjes Integral. It made a lot of thematter less exiting than it could have been. And to be honest, most of the proofs stayed quiteunintelligible: one could follow the details but kept missing the big picture.The point however is, that it only now becomes clear to me that I have been a
 fashion victim
, that whatI perceived as the way mathematics was done period, was only a relatively new style of writing andteaching, a fashion that had been
en vogue
for only a few decades yet.This reflection of Stanislaw Ulam is confirmed by Davis & Hersh in their 1981 book 
The Mathematical Experience
. In a section on the philosophy of mathematics they remark:‘The formalist style gradually penetrated downward into undergraduate mathematics teachingand, finally, in the name of “the new math”, even invaded kindergarten (…)’. (p.344)And they continue with the observation that the formalist style might have had its longest time.Actually I’m not sure that such a thing will happen. At least some of the formalism seems to merelated to a certain machismo between mathematicians; the shorter and the less intuitive the proof, thebetter the mathematician.In their section on
Teaching and Leaning Math
, Davis & Hersh give an example of the contrastbetween a short formal proof and a more elaborate and a more intuitive one. It is about ‘the two-pancake problem’, the problem of cutting two pancakes in halves by cutting only once in a straightline. And the pancakes aren’t on top of each other.The example of ‘the two-pancake problem’ is put in the context of the contrast between what is called‘the logic of scientific discovery’ and that of ‘the logic of scientific justification’. The latter being astreamlined version of the former, a logically tight presentation with all hurdles and frustrations leftout. It is a linear ‘success only’ story, told in a highly stylized language, ideally that of formal logic.Now such a linear success story has only one goal, and that is to bring home the message of success.Formal proofs do that, but with the same price paid as with other success stories: because of the lack of drama it is difficult to get engaged by them and the insights that the storyteller gained in his strugglesare not the focal point of the story, only the message of success is.So I think there’s something to say for a math education (if not math itself) where insights fromstorytelling are used to bring home the insights of the great mathematicians.
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