Math Wonders to Inspire Teachers & Students
by Merri Rosenberg

As someone who last took a math class nearly 30 years ago as a high school junior, I have to confess that this wasn’t the kind of title that I’d normally pull from the shelves. Math was definitely my least favorite subject, and there was little effort made by the faculty at my small private high school in Brooklyn to make the topics engaging, accessible, compelling, or in any way relevant to our daily life’s experience. I wasn’t very good at math, and at no point in my high school career was I made to feel inadequate that math was my weak point.

In fact, one of the first questions that I asked at my Barnard College admissions interview was whether or not I’d have to take a math class to graduate. (For the record, the answer then was no‚ students are no longer permitted to be as wobbly in quantitative skills as I was).

And that, according to Alfred S. Posamentier, Professor of Mathematics Education and Dean of the School of Education of the City College of the City University of New York‚ and author of this book‚ is part of the problem with how math continues to be taught.

“When I meet someone socially and they discover that my field of interest is mathematics, I am usually confronted with the proud exclamation: “Oh, I was always terrible in math!” For no other subject in the curriculum would an adult be so proud of failure. “Having been weak in mathematics is a badge of honor,” Dr. Posamentier writes.

Guilty as charged. Sad to say, I still am one of those adults who has little shame about admitting how challenging it is to calculate a restaurant tip, or who nonchalantly skips over a newspaper or magazine article that deals with a mathematical topic.

At first glance, in fact, I wasn’t even sure I understood what the section headings meant, let alone what the topics referred to. Granted, I am not the target audience. Math teachers (and teachers teaching math at the lower grade levels), and by extension their students, are the ones for whom Dr. Posamentier is writing. I would imagine that keeping a copy of this book in a high school math class would go a long way towards dispelling the math phobia that still afflicts so many in my generation.

“It is my inherent belief that the root of the problem lies in the inherent unpopularity of mathematics,” Dr. Posamentier says in his preface. “We must finally demonstrate the inherent beauty of mathematics, so that those students who do not have a daily need for it can be led to appreciate it for its beauty and not only for its usefulness. This, then, is the objective of the book: to provide sufficient evidence of the beauty of mathematics through many examples in a variety of its branches. “I would imagine that this book, with its clear examples and illustrations on mathematical subjects would offer a fairly persuasive argument for Dr. Posamentier’s point that mathematics can be elegant and amazing.

Topics range from arithmetic, like the Russian Peasant’s Method of Multiplication, The Unusual Number 9 or The Fabulous Fibonacci Numbers to algebra, like The Mysterious Number 22, or Using Algebra to Establish Arithmetic Shortcuts, and even geometry, with The Golden Rectangle or The Nine-Point Circle.

There’s plenty more: a chapter on what Dr. Posamentier calls Mathematical Paradoxes, like the Deceptive Border or Limits with Understanding, or a chapter on Counting and Probability that explores such topics as Birthday Matches and Anticipating Heads and Tails.

I am sure this would be a valuable, useful and inspiring addition to any math teacher’s repertoire (and, of course a turn-on for those lower grade teachers who still need to be convinced of math’s beauty!)#

Math Wonders To Inspire Teachers & Studnets
by Alfred S. Posamentier, Ph.D.
(ASCD, $27.95)

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