2/9/17
Thursday
Around noon
Foggy
One of the things that I have been hearing in classrooms and lectures a lot recently is "easing the monotony." For example, my Intro to Real Analysis professor will often ask the class, "What should I name this variable this time?" Or Sal Khan, in one of his Khan Academy videos, will switch up the colors he uses when he is demonstrating a mathematical concept, switching from magenta to teal, for instance.
On the surface, these changes seem arbitrary or inconsequential. That is, in what way are these tiny changes affecting the absorption of the course material? These variables could be named anything (within reason, of course) and the color of the pen could be any color, and one would think that the material would be unchanged. There is a tangible purpose to this, though: breaking the cycle. We all adhere to some sort of routine day after day; as Douglas Coupland once wrote, "Most people can't handle an unstructured life." Such a routine can make one feel trapped, fixed in a treadmill, or a hamster wheel, repeating a structure day by day, mindlessly functioning, robotic. Yet, an important part of the human experience is choice*. Freedom. We should be able to do whatever we want! We should be able to brush our teeth with our left hand instead of our right, we should be able to have a Mocha this morning instead of an Americano, and we should surely be able to name the limit of a function "D" instead of the conventional "L." These arbitrary changes are not useless, but rather expressions of our freedoms as conscious people. Sal Khan and Prof. Zimmerman understand this, and and they choose to break the dreary cycle of monotony with which mathematics is often associated. Sal and Birge, I thank you. And God fucking Bless America.
*The illusion thereof, at least.
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