[July 2022 -- I read the 1st half but not the 2nd before it had to back to the library]
I'm reading *specifically* "The Annotated Alice: The Definitive[July 2022 -- I read the 1st half but not the 2nd before it had to back to the library]
I'm reading *specifically* "The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition," where the annotations have been made by Martin Gardner (and a bunch of others who've written to him or to Alice-themed newsletters). AHHHHH they should have taken the King's advice:
p.143: "If there's no meaning in it," said the King, "that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any."
So. The way this "Definitive Edition" was advertised, I was expecting that Martin friggin Gardner (author of the "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American, and respected mathematician in his own right) would focus on mathematical or logic-puzzle themes that were hidden in the Alice books by Carroll (himself also a mathematician and author of books on logic).
But instead...
1) Gardner states in the foreword that he doesn't think Carroll did much interesting math. And so far (I've read all of "Wonderland" but haven't yet read "Looking Glass"), indeed there are almost no math annotations. The few that are there are mostly about *names* that mathematicians and physicists borrowed from the Alice books *later*.
(I even noticed one that Gardner missed, probably because he was ninety when it came out: There is a HTML-parsing Python package named , and it seems to be named after the Mock Turtle's song.)
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Okay well, that's too bad, there's not much recreational math here after all---but maybe the other annotations themselves are interesting? Nope:
2) Most of the annotations I found to be incredibly uninteresting: they are trivial facts ("a cucumber frame is a frame in which you grow cucumbers, duuuuuuuh!"), or spurious random connections ("The Alice books start with 'Alice' and the Oz books start with 'Dorothy,' which proves a deep link between Carroll and Baum!"), or outright nonsensical numerology ("The King says something about Rule 42---and if you let A=1, B=2, etc, then the author's middle name adds up to 42, OMG!!!").
A few annotations link events in the books to events in Carroll's diary (e.g. he took his friend Alice Liddell on a boat trip and they got wet, which is similar to how Alice meets the Dodo). Maybe this is interesting to some. But to me, it feels like... if the book is interesting in its own right, then **who cares** whether it was inspired by real-life events of daily life? That's how I make up bedtime stories to tell my own kids! Should I write those stories down to publish AND also keep a diary, so that future generations know that, say, "They all got ice cream on a Tuesday in Jerzy's classic of children's literature because Jerzy and his actual kids got ice cream that day"??? Of course not! Who cares? Tell me why the book is (or should be, or could be) **interesting to a wide audience of readers**, not minor details of why the book has random plot event A instead of random plot event B.
There are indeed a *few* annotations I found legit interesting: Most of Carroll's songs and poems are outright parodies of lyrics that have been forgotten today. "Twinkle twinkle little bat" is obviously a play on "Twinkle twinkle little star," but I did not know most of the others---for instance "How doth the little crocodile" is written about a "lazy" animal as a parody of "How doth the little busy bee" which at the time was a popular moralistic poem about a "hardworking" animal.
I expected a lot more annotations like this last category. Take the case of a different British fantasy author: the explains some of the less-obvious classical references and linguistic jokes in the Discworld books. In the case of the APF, I personally find Pratchett's books funny in their own right even when I miss the references---but when I do finally understand a reference (say, knowing that Pratchett's characters are having fun mangling a beloved Shakespeare line or a stodgy Roman myth), it makes my grin all that much wider. By contrast, knowing that Alice gets wet because Carroll and the real Alice Liddell once got rained on? That doesn't do much for my appreciation of the book.
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Okay, well, these annotations mostly sound like the work of a harmless old crank, finding patterns in noise... but they're not hurting anyone. Right? RIGHT?!??
3) Oh boy. Carroll liked to photograph little girls. In the nude. Like, really little girls. And when it comes to the one that *this* book was written for (Alice Liddell)... HER MOM WAS SO FREAKED OUT BY CARROLL THAT SHE CUT HIM OFF AND BURNED HIS LETTERS TO HER PREPUBESCENT DAUGHTER. In the annotations and forewords, Gardner works very very very very very hard to try and spin this in a not-THAT-negative light, but... man!
Why are we still reading this old white creepy dude's bullsh*t when there are a zillion other books out there? [This is a rhetorical question, but also a legit one that Gardner doesn't seem to answer: Why did the Alice books become so popular at the time, and how have they stayed popular enough to be known today, when so many other books from that time have been forgotten? Presumably THAT wouldn't be due to Carroll's fetishes nor due to numerology nonsense---and it would have been far more interesting to speculate about than the stuff Gardner chose to focus on.]
Maybe more to the point (since again I didn't choose to just read Carroll, but specifically I was hoping to be inspired/amused by *Gardner's* annotations): Why did GARDNER (the famous mathematician!) decide to publish annotations about the Alice books WHEN HE HIMSELF SAID THE AUTHOR'S MATH WAS BORING---and when he also KNEW the author was pervy? Why didn't he pick someone whose books DID actually contain mathematically-interesting references worth annotating? Or if not, then why didn't he pick someone else that WASN'T a sketchy sleazeball? ...more
I strongly agree with Ani's push to make math classes more engaging, and especially more collaborative. Let's focus on the social learning of studentsI strongly agree with Ani's push to make math classes more engaging, and especially more collaborative. Let's focus on the social learning of students working together, rather than the so-called "personalized instruction" of students spending hours on drills at a computer. Part 5 on "the social purpose of school" is excellent.
Apologies in advance for ranting about a minor concern: I do have some quibbles with the way he talks about using real-world applications. I'm all for real-world, but with caution! There's an important fine line between "let's practice using the math that's needed to understand this complex societal problem" and "let's use math to SOLVE this problem!" Ani does mention such cautions, but at times I sensed a slight hint of
Yes, math teachers should be prepared to discuss the linear equations or probability calculations underlying some important real-world disagreement in the news, and to carefully lead some exploration around those topics. But we can't necessarily expect them to have the subject-matter expertise (economics or biology or whatever) to understand where those linear equations *break down*, or how *where the data come from* affects the interpretation of the probability calculations. (See: .)
So instead of encouraging math teachers to cover stuff way outside their wheelhouse, in the long run I'd rather see schools break down walls between courses, and get (say) a math teacher, biology teacher, and school nurse to *co-teach* a course on epidemiology... as Ani himself suggests briefly (p.78). But of course that's a very idealistic aspiration for most schools, with huge hurdles to overcome, and meanwhile I can't blame Ani for focusing on changes that individual teachers can make in their own classrooms.
Maybe I wouldn't have these fears (of mathematical overconfidence) if the book had included a complete , walked through in much more detail, showing how far class discussions tend to go and how they can be wrapped up responsibly. To make room, Ani could have edited down some of the repeated dramatic rhetoric calling us to action.
Still, it's an engaging and thought-provoking book, one which I'll return to as I keep planning my own Statistics courses....more
Pretty darn funny, and accurate, depictions of Eastern European culture and academic math culture. Mixed with moving reminiscences about survival in WPretty darn funny, and accurate, depictions of Eastern European culture and academic math culture. Mixed with moving reminiscences about survival in WW2 on the Russian front.
Now, I really hate some of the awful parts of math culture: participants can only be either brilliant or mediocre, and there's absolute refusal to respect anyone who's not on the brilliant side... The book depicted these flaws well too, though it glorified them a bit too much for me.
It has very funny moments, but it's more subdued than the screwball comedy I expected from the synopsis on my copy's cover. It is *not* a zany chase full of people prying up floorboards during a funeral.
It's definitely clear out that the author is a scholar of the atmospheric sciences. The weather descriptions are never "It snowed and stayed cold," but rather "The high-pressure Arctic air mass had decided to stagnate."
The narrator's griping about Americans was spot on the first few times, & sounds just like some of my relatives---but it got old and repetitive. Did he start writing the same content in several chapters, then forget to edit it out?
Also, why does he spend almost no time (view spoiler)[talking to his newfound daughter and granddaughter? Of course it's hard for me to imagine the grief I'd feel at a parent's funeral, plus the narrator has all these other people's antics to deal with---but still, if my long-lost child wandered into my life, I'd forget all the rest and want to get to know them. Right (hide spoiler)]?
Favorite parts: * p.42: Dear reader, don't panic. Newton was barely past twenty when he invented calculus. It's pure adolescent whimsy at work. Think of the language of mathematics as shorthand that has been around for centuries, the equivalent of teenage texting, but for geeks. Yes, I know you don't know half the text abbreviations that your teenage children use, but you can figure out their argot if pressed, can you not? You can figure out this one as well. * p.91: "You spend too much time worrying about men, Anna. They are all alike. Pretty boring, really. Just pick one and keep him." * p.105: At the time I thought I had learned an obvious lesson. Do not fall in love with someone when that love is heavily dependent on the goodwill and kindness of your parents. Find someone else. It's a stupid thing to expect a family to help you tie up your love life into a nice bow, and smart people do stupid things far more often than most people realize. Now, looking back, I don't think that's the lesson that I should have learned. I should have understood that when you love someone, and they are being subjected to cruelty, you need to do whatever you can to shield them, to defend them, even if the source of that cruelty, maybe especially if the source of that cruelty, is your own mother. This is your obligation. There are no exceptions. * p.150: I knew the type. They had begun to invade Tuscaloosa, these young professors. Male and female, they were all so skinny, fit, and earnest, and so remarkably free of anxiety. When you asked them what they liked to do, they had two answers, their work and running. They ran an ungodly number of miles every week not to avert a health crisis, but simply because they loved to run. Who understood them? Endorphins saturated their blood, mixed with the caffeine from their no-fat lattes. A new generation had arrived, and it quite frankly was superior, if much more boring, than my own. * p.267: She had also started to develop the ability (or liability) of being in one place physically but only partially there mentally. It was like dealing with a cell phone wavering between one and two bars of reception, functional but a bit worrisome. Her mind was not in the here and now but was usually preoccupied... This habit of only sort of being present can drive nonacademics crazy. But it's the only way I know that anyone can solve intellectually difficult problems. It's a constant processing of ideas and techniques in the background that happens even when you dream. * p.276: "You think you've been lucky?" "I don't allow myself to be unlucky." * p.285: "It's the best place in the world for a smart man to be. All this money, all this opportunity, and only stupid, lazy Americans to compete against. It's heaven on earth."...more
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