Month: March 2023

A Customer Gets Served

by

March 6, 2023

1:21 pm

Leave a comment on A Customer Gets Served

Not mathematics

(Marty calls up the Happy Health Care, and auto-identifies himself. He is connected to Daisy.)

D: Hello, this is the Happy Health Care. You’re speaking to Daisy. Is that Marty?

M: Yep, thanks Daisy. Do you have my account info there?

D: Yes. I do. How may I help you?

M: Thanks, Daisy. I got a letter from you guys, saying that because of Covid I’m owed a refund on some of the services that were unavailable, but that my bank details are missing. The letter said I could add the details online, but when I tried it didn’t seem to work. So, I’m hoping you can sort it out for me. Continue reading “A Customer Gets Served” →

In the Realm of the Senseless

by

March 5, 2023

9:53 pm

6 Comments on In the Realm of the Senseless

media

, , ,

When we first met Sandra Milligan, “Enterprise Professor” at the University of Melbourne’s Graduate School of Education, she was ringleading a bunch of school principals in a campaign against the ATAR. The Age‘s Adam Carey gave Milligan and her cronies a free kick article, because of course it’s not the job of an education reporter to question whether their primary source might be a know-nothing ideologue. Now, Milligan is back in the news, partnered with something called Realms of Thinking, with the free kick “exclusive” provided this time by The Educator‘s Brett Henebery. Continue reading “In the Realm of the Senseless” →

The Non-Constant Gardner

by

March 2, 2023

1:44 pm

19 Comments on The Non-Constant Gardner

writing

,

Recent events – the bastardisation of Roald Dahl and the burning of history – reminded me of a post I had planned long ago, on Martin Gardner and school libraries. It is often said that Martin Gardner is responsible for creating more mathematicians than anybody else. As the fable goes, a bright-eyed teenager stumbles upon a collection of Gardner’s mathematical writing in the school library, they read away on weird topologies and the Game of Life and so on, they are entranced and another mathematician is born. The fable is not true, but it is true enough. Continue reading “The Non-Constant Gardner” →