Instead of Nano ...

It's November again :)

And November means ... NaNoWriMo! (http://www.nanowrimo.org/)

I'd kind of like to do it this year ... even though I think it's a bad idea. So in an attempt to /not/ do this, I'm going to be blogging on here every day instead (famous last words). It might spark me into a rhythm that'll work for updating this blog and the other blog (www.eudoxiafriday.wordpress.com). Who knows ...

So ... I guess that means I need to have something to talk about! Term is going on well. I'm starting to actually do some work for my master's, which is a good thing - spent this afternoon doing the readings for this week's sessions, which are on 'the nature of mathematics' and 'problem solving'. The problem solving stuff is kind of interesting - there's some stuff about metacognition which is something I'm really interested in. Although having said that, that paper is for an assignment, not for this week's discussion ...

The paper that we did have to read for this week's problem solving discussion is basically an exploration of a problem that the author received via email, solved over a 24 hour period (as in, he was doing other things and then thinking about the problem whilst out for a walk / in other spare moments - not that this is a problem that takes a mathematician 24 hours to solve!) and then shared with some of his students and got them to solve. As an exercise, we had to stop when we read the statement of the problem and solve it ourselves - making notes about how we went about solving it.


Here's the problem:
A man and his partner invite 5 other couples to a dinner party. As the guests are coming in, the two hosts shake hands with them and some of the guests shake hands with other guests, but for assorted reasons not everybody shakes everybody else's hand - and of course, nobody shakes hands with their own partner.
Later in the evening, the subject of the handshakes comes up, and the aforementioned man asks each of the other people present how many handshakes they participated in. He gets 11 distinct answers.

How many hands did the man's partner shake?

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Answers on the back of a postcard ... or in the comments, of course :). It's a nice little problem, but more interesting is the problem solving processes that one goes through (including any blind alleys and the like) - I'm looking forward to the discussion on Wednesday and learning how other people did things. Comparing my problem solving strategy with the author's (I should cite this ... "Rowland, T. (2003) 'Mathematics as human activity: a different handshakes problem.' The Mathematics Educator, 7(2), pp. 55-70."), we approached things similarly but he abandoned his first approach while I went with it. (I'm avoiding saying what it was to try and avoid prejudicing anyone who does want to try the problem and see what methods they go through without outside influence).


On a completely different topic ... had a cool conversation with a Vicar this morning. Including potentially revolutionising my understanding of the fall ... the idea being: what are Adam and Eve supposed to do? Essentially, rule the world (have dominion over and take care of the animals, plants, etc etc). So then what happens ... this serpent shows up (as if by magic) and starts saying beguiling things. And what do they do - do they do what they're supposed to and take charge? No, they sit back and let the serpent do stuff ... and maybe that's the fall. The fruit and the temptation and things happen afterwards.

This point of view makes a lot of sense to me. E.g. it implies we don't have a God who goes "you can do anything. But don't touch this ... no really, don't touch this ..." and sets them up for failure. That would be a desirable implication. Also, it means that the fall is not primarily Eve's fault - something that's been used to oppress women. That would also be a desirable implication.

So there're two things to think about ... maths and theology. Not a bad combination, in my opinion.

:)