Re: Abolish Fractions???? the nutty professor 3 -> out now !!

Angus wrote:

On Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:59:49 -0500, quasi
<quasi@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

But if you watch the video,

<http://www.sas.upenn.edu/home/news/sixtysec_lectures
_archive.html#D>

it will be (almost) immediately obvious that he's
not serious -- it
was just a spoof. In other words, he's just kidding!

But he got taken literally, both by the news media,
and by others as
well. Many sci.math regulars took it more seriously
than they should
have for the simple reason that the idea was
presented by a well
known, highly respected mathematician. In other
words, "The Emperor's
Clothes" phenomenon.

I'll proudly point out that even before watching the
video, I wasn't
fooled for a minute.

But calling him a "kook" isn't the same as saying
that he's
kidding. (A "kook" is presumably kidding himself,
which is
not the same as someone intentionally kidding
others.)

But it just goes to show how dangerous kidding can
be. Given that he
actually _is_ kidding (I mean he really is, isn't
he?),

I have to say, it still isn't obvious to me what he
is doing,
even after watching the video three times. (But I do
have
some difficulty reading facial expressions - perhaps
I'm a
bit autistic, I don't know.)

he could
inadvertently get taken seriously by the _funders_
of education, thus
seriously damaging math education in the US (and
possibly the world --
after all -- if the US does it, it must be right, or
at least, that's
what funders of education in other countries might
conclude). Thus, a
silly joke, presumably intended to create publicity
for his book, sets
mathematics back a few thousand years. Nice going,
DeTurck!

The trouble with the publicity theory is that the
lecture was given
in 2004, and yet the book still isn't out, in early
2008 - which is
taking the idea of advance publicity too far! Such
an intentional
spoof would only work if there was only a short time
lag. So I'm
still baffled, and I still think I must be missing
the joke.

--
Angus Rodgers
(twirlip@ eats spam; reply to angusrod@)
Contains mild peril

HA ! of course his book isnt out yet !!!

you cant write a decent math book without using fractions !!!

( you could of course restrict to aleph_3 , but that's no decent math of course )

in 2012 that book will still not be out !!!

regards
tommy1729

ps : stephen wolfram's books have also been coming out way to late :

its a bad sign , considering the large amount of useless pages in NKS.

despite the fuss of the title :
" a new kind of science !! "

and comments in the press like : book of the millenium !
best book ever !! ( non-fiction )

a new kind of math !!
etc

there were even rumours about a chapter in it about a new method to do integrals ; was not even in there !!

( however the NKS award was usefull )
.