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Paul Zorn

Paul Zorn
Affiliation:
St. Olaf College
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Summary

I teach mostly pure mathematics at a liberal arts college so I might be thought a dreamy, impractical, type. Wrong! Nothing is more “useful” than college mathematics. An analogy with language explains why. Like French, mathematics has lots of uses, but they all require knowledge of the language itself—lots of vocabulary and grammar, and a glance at the literature. Conveying all those things is my job. With a working knowledge of the language of mathematics, one can go anywhere: to concrete applications, to teaching, to more study of mathematics itself.

Since the appearance of the first addition of this book, some things have changed. For instance, the internet would now join digital music and widebody jets on any short list of popular wonders of science and mathematics. Cryptography—itself driven largely by the growth of the internet—is now a leading application of number theory, a mathematical field traditionally seen as the purest of the pure. (Not all the mathematical news is computer-driven: in the mid-90s, Andrew Wiles solved the 350-year-old problem known as Fermat's Last Theorem.)

Another current of change in mathematics, related to but not entirely driven by computing, has come to be known as “calculus reform.” That loaded phrase means quite different things to different people, but many college mathematicians agree that the elementary calculus course, historically the foundation of a mathematics major, needs some shoring up.

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Publisher: Mathematical Association of America
Print publication year: 2014

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  • Paul Zorn
  • Edited by Andrew Sterrett
  • Book: 101 Careers in Mathematics
  • Online publication: 05 September 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.5948/9781614441168.149
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  • Paul Zorn
  • Edited by Andrew Sterrett
  • Book: 101 Careers in Mathematics
  • Online publication: 05 September 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.5948/9781614441168.149
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Paul Zorn
  • Edited by Andrew Sterrett
  • Book: 101 Careers in Mathematics
  • Online publication: 05 September 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.5948/9781614441168.149
Available formats
×