Self study mathematicians biography

Biographies are important for building interest in mathematics.

Self study mathematicians biography examples

By putting a human face on a field that students tend to see as abstract, biographies help young people see what people who study complex math are interested in and how they ask questions that drive their thinking and research.

When I talk with math majors, they often have difficulty seeing the potential for stories to be teaching tools—the sole exception being story problems that help one learn math. Part of the difficulty seems to lie in the fact that while books dealing with science, social studies and the arts are often inherently telling a larger story, it is hard to recognize a story in something as abstract as an algebraic expression or a geometrical theorem.

Yet even a formula or its application can tell a story—a story that involves a problem and a solution. There are many wonderful biographies of mathematicians and the problems they attempt to solve. Hidden in the illustrations are objects that incorporate Fibonacci numbers and spirals.

Self study mathematicians biography