MathProse

Welcome to Math Prose,
Here you will find my attempt to merge the right and left part of the brain,
to show that logic and creativity are not mutually exclusive.

There’s Short Stories and Longer Stories.
Math Quotes from some more or less intelligent people.
Stories submitted by Other Authors, maybe even you.

To get started you can peruse the story listings using the links in the sidebar.
Each story will have a short description, a list of the topics covered,
and the NCTM Standards addressed.

Or you can go straight to the topic you’re looking for:

Finkel, Benjamin Franklin
The solution of problems is one of the lowest forms of mathematical research, … yet its educational value cannot be overestimated. It is the ladder by which the mind ascends into higher fields of original research and investigation. Many dormant minds have been aroused into activity through the mastery of a single problem.
The American Mathematical Monthly, no. 1.

Kovalevsky, Sonja
Say what you know, do what you must, come what may.
[Motto on her paper "On the Problem of the Rotation of a Solid Body about a Fixed Point."]

Euler, Leonhard (1707-1783) [upon losing the use of his right eye]
Now I will have less distraction.
In H. Eves In Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1969.

Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Reader’s Digest. Oct. 1977.

Henkin, Leon
One of the big misapprehensions about mathematics that we perpetrate in our classrooms is that the teacher always seems to know the answer to any problem that is discussed. This gives students the idea that there is a book somewhere with all the right answers to all of the interesting questions, and that teachers know those answers. And if one could get hold of the book, one would have everything settled. That’s so unlike the true nature of mathematics.
L.A. Steen and D.J. Albers (eds.), Teaching Teachers, Teaching Students, Boston: Birkhäuser, 1981.

Chesterton, G. K. (1874 – 1936)
It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.
The Point of a Pin in The Scandal of Father Brown.

Eddington, Sir Arthur (1882-1944)
We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about ‘and’.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.

Caballero, James
I advise my students to listen carefully the moment they decide to take no more mathematics courses. They might be able to hear the sound of closing doors.
Everybody a mathematician?, CAIP Quarterly 2 (Fall, 1989).

Mary Gets a 32?!
by Jeff Valure

Mary crossed her fingers as her math teacher made his way around the room handing back the tests. She had started to worry this morning in science class when, while doodling in her notebook, she caught a glimpse of the formula sheet she was supposed to have memorized for the test. She had mixed them all up. How could she not? There were all these little tiny letters and symbols; none of it made any sense.

Mr. Liotti was coming up the next row over. Soon he would be standing at her desk, handing back her paper. “What happened?” he would say. He knew darn well what happened. She choked. It wasn’t the first time.

Mary stared down at her desk, trying not to make eye contact with anybody. She heard groans to the left, a sigh of relief behind her, then the foot steps stopped. Slowly she raised her head.

“I know what you’re gonna say–” Mary began but stopped short. Mr Liotti was smiling. He put her test face down on her desk and continued up the aisle. Mary was afraid to look. She lifted up a corner and took a peek. A few red marks, not too bad. The rest of the test was probably worse. Mary choked a lot. In class she could do everything. She just didn’t “test well”. That’s what the guidance counselor told her parents. “Mary has a lot of anxiety during tests.” Boy, did she. On test days, they had to get a janitor to mop up all the sweat around her desk.

She caught another glimpse of Mr. Liotti. He smiled at her again. She decided it couldn’t be that bad and to just bite the bullet. She flipped the test over and pried her eyes open.

32!? No way she got a 32! Why would Mr. Liotti smile at that? 32 was a terrible grade. Even if it was doubled, it still wouldn’t be passing. How could he smile? He must like seeing his students fail. Mary was shocked and miserable. Had he come to expect this of her? She tried so hard to do well. Maybe too hard, her counselor had said.

That’s it, Mary was giving up. She tried her best and it got her a 32. She had had it. She leaned back in her chair, not picking up her pencil for the whole class. “It isn’t worth it,” she thought. But it was. It was always worth it to try your best and to stand up to adversity. She knew that. She also knew that this adversity was Mr. Liotti, a teacher who smiled at his failing students. Boy!

She stewed in those juices for the rest of the period. She waited until the rest of the class left before she stormed up to his desk. Smile at her! Boy! He smiled again. Mary started talking a mile a minute. She told about her counselor and the janitor and the formulas and the homework and on and on. That is until she took a closer look at her test. The grade was a 32 out of 38. Boy, she felt dumb… and smart.

The Question.
1. What was Mary’s grade as a percentage? Each of her six points off would be worth how many points in that respect?

Ricky Buys A Soda

by Jeff Valure

“What the?”
“What’s the matter?”
“The register went dead.”
“So?”
“I’m going to have to get a manager over here.”
“What?! I don’t have time to stand around.”
“It will only take a second. Let me just pick up the intercom. What the?”
“What’s the matter?!”
“The intercom’s dead. Now what am I going to do?”
“Here, the soda’s seventy-five cents.”
“The scanner’s not working.”
“There’s a price on the bottle. It says seventy-five cents.”
“But there’s tax.”
“There’s no tax on food.”
“There’s tax on soda.”
“What’s the tax?”
“I don’t know. Like seven something.”
“Excuse me, tax is seven and a quarter percent.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Tax is seven and a quarter percent.”
“So what’s that make?”
“You’re the cashier, you tell me.”
“I don’t know. Let me try the intercom again. Maybe if I bang it against the register, one of them will start working.”
“Here’s eighty-five cents. Okay? I’m leaving.”
“Wait! There’s also a deposit…”

The Question.
Did Ricky give the cashier enough money to cover the soda, the tax, and the deposit? Prove your answer. (Hint: There’s no tax on the deposit.)