Math is...

...beautiful, satisfying, useful, real, true, social, creative, fun! according to some bloke named Strogatz.

Steven Strogatz's recent interview with Patrick Honner for "Math Horizons" is now up, and, of course wonderful (particularly enjoy his description of his writing process):

http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/horizons/strogatz_feb14.pdf

From the piece: "One of the great mistakes that a lot of teachers make is that they think, 'I need to cover this material' instead of 'I need to help this person who is my friend.'”

As much as anyone, Dr. Strogatz puts humanity back into mathematics! (thanks for bringing him to us Patrick).

Whole interview sorta makes me want to buy 100 copies of his Joy of x book and just stand on a street corner somewhere handing them out (...but, I'll refrain) ;-)

p.s. -- Dr. Strogatz will be on NPR's "Science Friday" tomorrow in honor of "Pi Day."


...Tomorrow, there will be another weekly potpourri up over at MathTango (miscellaneous links I found interesting during the week, but didn't post about). Also, just realized I never linked from here to my last interview over there, with Alexander Bogomolny (of "Cut the Knot") in case you missed that.