Mathematica
notes
about half way through i realized the story wasn't going to deliver on examples but focus on the meta-discussion that math is accessible.
it's as if one were to read a book about a magician that spent 20 chapters dissecting their journey learning to love magic and why they want to share it with others, but never really telling the stories of any magic tricks.
alas, the message still is meaningful and some of the stories and digressions were still useful, if not limited. and there are examples of using imagination to engage with math, just not enough of them.
there are useful insights as well. on how to (or not to) read a math paper/textbook, on how to not take pure math too seriously (ex: the pursuit of eternal truth above all else) and the benefits of tapping your imagination as opposed to only dealing with numbers in the raw.
connecting our (mostly) current understanding of deep learning and neural networks as to an argument that our brains aren't calculators and that math education shouldn't expect us to be seems simplistic but i think achieves a worthy goal.
in some ways, i see math education as embracing some of the advice. the use of number blocks (tens blocks, one blocks and hundred blocks) is one example. in other ways, david definitely seems to argue for something deeper, more imaginative and more engaging.
while math makes for a good subject to benefit from such an approach, i don't see why stop at one subject, if not the entire foundation of how schools are structured...
overall, i continue to feel excited about thinking about math and i wouldn't mind a world where i had a decade to give towards one conjecture.
summary
A fascinating look into how the transformative joys of mathematical experience are available to everyone, not just specialists. Math has a reputation for being inaccessible. People think that it requires a special gift or that comprehension is a matter of genes. Yet the greatest mathematicians throughout history, from René Descartes to Alexander Grothendieck, have insisted that this is not the case. Like Albert Einstein, who famously claimed to have "no special talent," they said that they had accomplished what they did using ordinary human doubts, weaknesses, curiosity, and imagination. David Bessis guides us on an illuminating path toward deeper mathematical comprehension, reconnecting us with the mental plasticity we experienced as children.