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TAG: proofs
David Butler and the Prisoner of Alhazen
Once upon a time, I did a PhD in projective geometry. It was all about objects called quadrals (a word I made up) – ovals, ovoids, conics, quadrics and their cones – and the lines associated with them – tangents, secants, external lines, generator lines. During the first two years, I did talks about my […]
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Pretending not to know
Yesterday the Maths 1M students handed in an assignment question that asked them to prove a property of triangles using a vector-based argument. It’s not my job to help students do their assignment questions per se, but it is my job to help them learn skills to solve any future problem. This kind of problem, […]
The square root of two
In first year maths, they briefly study the five families of number: the natural numbers N, the integers Z, the rational numbers Q, the real numbers R, and the complex numbers C. In particular, they focus on the distinction between the rational numbers and the real numbers. A classic proof they are given at this […]