RIP Martin Gardner

More than any classroom teacher I ever had, Martin Gardner shaped my mathematical interests. "For 35 years, he wrote Scientific American's Mathematical Games column, educating and entertaining minds and launching the careers of generations of mathematicians"

I learned that he died on Tuesday. Only two days before, I stood in the front yard of my Mother's home in Fort Worth and told Alex, my sister's grandson, aged 12, that if he wanted to nurture his curiosity for math and science he should find anything in the library by Martin Gardner and read it every year for the next ten years of his life, and each year, I promised, he would find something new in the reading.

I can not do justice to the life of a man who was the mathematical Pied-Piper of mathematics for a generation of us; so here is link to the article in Scientific American.

The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated?

After several inquiries, I thought I should admit that I am alive and well, but not finding much time to blog. I am attending to my beautiful sweetheart while she has a minor surgery and along the way trying to teach my two AP classes some extended "after the exam" topics from five time zones away.... go ahead, try to get up and teach at 3am.... I am not at my best at that time...and I really need to have them see my hands wave....

My stats kids are doing some stuff on game theory, and the calc kids are exploring Topology...

Doing all this over a well-secured but not always compliant military connection has required extreme patience on the part of my students, my very capable substitute teacher, and occasionally even I have had to monitor my temper bursts...
I promise to roar back soon and blast away with my trivia/mathematica...

In the meantime, if you haven't seen Dan Meyer's talk on Ted.... check it out...he is one of my favorite bloggers, and the video will show why...