Contest: Educational experience account (win a book) 1/24-2/7

[Orodruin]

In connection to the publication of my new textbook Mathematical Methods for Physics and Engineering, CRC Press has graciously offered Physics Forums three free copies of it to use as prizes in various competitions. This is the third and last of the contests, the previous two being the photo contest and haiku/limerick contest, which ran over the holidays.

The contest task is to share an account of your best educational experience. It may be something you experienced as a student or as a teacher, but should be a good example of how your education or that someone you were teaching benefited from the actions described in the account. Your account may be as long or short as necessary, but make sure to include as much information as is needed to properly appreciate it. Only one entry per member.

The winner will be selected by voting among the mentors. Your account needs to be submitted before February 7 (coincidentally my birthday) to guarantee consideration.

Note! The book is aimed towards advanced undergraduate and graduate students in physics and the prerequisites for understanding the contents are therefore rather high. If for this or any other reason you feel that you do not want the book, you are still welcome to share your account. Just mention in your post that your account is not intended as a contest entry.

Note (2)! Due to shipping costs, we can offer free shipping within the United States only. If you want to compete for the book from another country, be aware that shipping costs may have to be imposed.

 

[berkeman]

I have a post that I'm composing about my best educational experience, but it is fairly long and it doesn't fit in the margins of the page...

Plus, I've already purchased your great book through the PF link (thank you), so I'll wait for the other responses to see if I should add my experience. Thank you Orodruin.

 

[dlgoff]

... I'll wait for the other responses to see if I should add my experience.

I would be interested in your experience. I'm sure it would be a great read.

 

[Arman777]

The contest task is to share an account of your best educational experience.

Don't understand me wrong but can't someone just lie or make up a story ?

 

[fresh_42]

Too bad weird and strange anecdotes about those who teach aren't allowed. I would have had a few.

 

[Wrichik Basu]

Can I write something about a great teacher? This will not specifically be an experience, but an account of devotion to subject and affection for students.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Can I write something about a great teacher? This will not specifically be an experience, but an account of devotion to subject and affection for students.

Yes

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Don't understand me wrong but can't someone just lie or make up a story ?

If someone wants to take the time to carefully craft a story, then so be it. This should be for fun with the book as incentive.

 

[Scrumhalf]

OK, here goes.

I am 53 years old, in industrial (semiconductor manufacturing) R&D for the last 28 years. So, this is from a long time ago, but it had a lasting impression on me.

When I was in high school, I had an absolutely wonderful mathematics teacher. I was in India at that time and having good teachers that had a genuine interest in the subject was a relatively rare thing. He was strict and a bit of an imposing figure, both physically and in his demeanor in class. But for a classmate of mine (who went on to get a Phys PhD) and myself, he was a treasure trove of knowledge. Talking to him after class, we realized that he was working as a high school teacher while doing his grad coursework at a nearby college as part of his graduate degree in fluid mechanics.

The teacher realized that my friend and I had a level of interest in math that was an outlier from the rest of the class. It was towards the end of our 10th grade school year and we had just covered the basics of calculus. He proposed that we attend math sessions at his house over the summer, an impromptu summer school if you will. This is something that he was conducting for his younger brother who was an undergrad at the same college that he was getting a grad degree at, as well as some other college students.

So, here we were, hopping on our bicycles twice a week all summer and biking the 5 km over to his house. We would sit in his backyard under the coconut palms while he would teach. Over the course of the summer, we learned partial differential equations, a fair bit of group theory and a significant amount of complex variables and techniques. I still have the notes from those sessions somewhere. He would make a great effort to make sure that we were able to quickly come up to speed and engage with the material which obviously was quite a bit more rigorous than what a high schooler would normally see.

Looking back, I am struck at how wonderful this teacher was in inviting a couple of young rising 11th graders to his math circle and really setting the life direction for us. He recognized something in us and really went through the trouble of blowing on those embers and getting the flame going. After those classes, I was so in love with the subject that I knew that I was going to do something related to math, physics or engineering in my life. It was easily the most significant formative experience in my life.

 

[jedishrfu]

Open to mentors? Just askin...

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Open to mentors? Just askin...

yes

 

[Buffu]

having good teachers that had a genuine interest in the subject was a relatively rare thing.

Sadly nothing has changed over 28 years. It is still all the same ...

 

[PAllen]

Hmm, little point of any other anecdotes after that one. Awfully hard to top.

 

[Orodruin]

Hmm, little point of any other anecdotes after that one. Awfully hard to top.

Even if that is the case, and I am not sure it is, I would say that the point is to share educational experiences. As Greg said, the contest itself is just incentive.

 

[fresh_42]

O.k., I'll try to break the ice and offer a story which is likely less of an highlight than the above. However, it still impresses me, when I think back.

As a student I occasionally offered math tutorials for school kids. One day I got a phone call for an appointment. My client wanted to learn set theory. This sounds more than it was. The subject was little more than a few Venn diagrams, intersections, complements and unions, so no big deal. I first met her on a sunny afternoon, I still remember the day, and we started to learn the basics about sets. She was a very nice and decent lady and I very much enjoyed the lessons. Nevertheless, I had to ask her, why in the world she wanted to learn set theory? The old lady answered: "I want to help my granddaughter with her homework!"

As I said, it still impresses me.

 

[Orodruin]

To break the ice further, let me offer up two cases of my own out of competition.

-----

As I started high-school, my class started the first mathematics lessons in trigonometry. After a 15 minute introduction, the class was to spend the remaining 30 minutes practicing on a set of problems the teacher wrote down on the black board with the understanding that whatever we did not complete was to be taken as homework and that anyone who completed them was free to leave. I was done after 5 minutes and left. I can tell you that hanging out waiting for the next class when all my classmates were struggling with trigonometry was not as much fun as it might sound. The same thing repeated in the next maths class. By the third class, my teacher had realized that I needed more stimulus and told me: "Mattias, you are free to solve whatever problems you like in the book during the introduction. When we reach the problem solving part, I want you to assist me in helping your classmates." Said and done, for the rest of my time in high-school I would be a second helper for my class in mathematics and physics (the physics classes were given by the same teacher). The benefits were many, both for myself and for the class:

• Essentially nobody in the class had to wait very long to get help.
• I got something meaningful to do. It was the first time I discovered the joy in teaching.
• My own knowledge benefited as well, since I had to think of ways to explain the difficult parts of the class to my peers. There is some truth to the saying that you do not really understand a subject until you can explain it to others.

I can honestly say that if it were not for this stroke of genius in recognising and using the different levels of the students in a creative and beneficial way, I would not be where I am today. Instead I would have likely grown bored and not very interested in physics. It was not a coincidence that this was one of the more popular teachers in the school and I owe him a lot. From what I have heard, he is still alive at 78 and one of his students has written a book on mathematical methods in physics and has plans to seek him out to give him one of the author copies.

-----

This time, I am the teacher. The very same course for which I started writing my lecture notes that later turned into my book is one of the more difficult courses in the program. It is not uncommon to see students struggle and return several years running, failing both the regular exam and the re-exam. A peculiarity is that students who are close to passing should be offered a small task to show that they deserve a passing grade. In my case, I usually offer those students a short oral exam.

The first year that I gave the course, there was one student that came to the oral exam and essentially could not get a single thought out. So I failed the student. The re-exam came and the student did not even reach the level required to get to the oral exam. The next year, I never saw the student. All the same, the student showed up for both the exam and the re-exam essentially without scoring a single point. As mentioned, this was nothing out of the ordinary. There were a handful of students that after failing the first time around would go to the re-exams with abysmal results. But this student was different. The next year, I noticed the student sitting quiet in the back of every single lecture, meticulously taking notes and paying attention. Finally, when the exam arrived, the student not only passed, but got the grade D (passing grades A-E) and was closer to a C than to an E. Reading the student's responses to the exam questions was such a difference compared to the oral exam where hardly a word was said and to the previous exams. To me, this student showed that even if you are struggling at times, hard work and determination often pays off. I do not think I have ever been happier to be able to pass a student.

 

[lekh2003]

I don't think I'm giving this account for winning the contest (the book is way above me), but here's my account:

I used to study in a quite uninteresting school (especially for the subjects I was interested in). The school was much more sports and arts oriented, to the point where several subjects were disregarded. Mathematics was heavily disregarded. The teachers were rookie university students not much older than us, with no experience in the field of education. Other teachers with experience were simply too old-fashioned and rarely interacted well with students.

So one fine day, it came to my class's knowledge that our math teacher had been fired after much complaint from the student body and parents as well. To replace our teacher, came a Turkish woman in her 30's, who also happened to be our new homeroom teacher. She entered the class with a fancy graphing calculator (which I now recall to be a TIN-Inspire) and all kinds of cool math gadgets (I was in the 6th Grade). We were well into Math class when most of us noticed that she was not an ordinary teacher. Her teaching style was drastically different from previous teachers, and the class was much more engaged (there are reasons for this which I will explain).

Like in many classes, I stand out; this is not only because I am a loud extrovert, but because I usually excel in Math. It didn't take long for the teacher to realize that I was ahead of my class. Usually, I would simply repeat the same exercises and problems that everyone else was doing and do the same thing several several times. This was tedious, but this was how I was used to it for quite a while. This teacher did not let me continue with what everyone was doing. Instead she got out a Turkish textbook, which, if anybody knows, is very difficult considering I had never done Turkish Math. She translated problems for me and at this point in time I was introduced to world of competitive math. I had been opened up to a whole new kind of math where speed and efficiency are key.

For years after, until I left the school, we spent several lunches and recesses working on ways to solve problems and she taught me things like number theory, set theory, complex geometry, etc. She had grown up in a competitive Turkish environment where she used several theorems with no apparent derivation. I then began working to find out how these theorems and magical equations were derived. We ended up spending hours and hours working on all kinds of odd tasks.

Furthermore, she personally registered our school in the Gauss, Pascal and Euler tests, and the ASMA, and the Canadian Mathematics Competition (CEMC) which I competed in and received some neat medals and certificates.

I am eternally in her debt for helping me.

 

[Dr.D]

My contribution comes from my own graduate school days, and actually involves two senior faculty that made it possible for me to finish.

I went to the same state university for BS, MS, and PhD degrees. I got married to my high school sweet heart just before my final undergraduate year. She was a year behind me age-wise, but she had graduated in three years while I took five to get a BS (that's another story). We were really happy together, and were starting a family; my first daughter arrived about the time these two intertwined stories occurred, roughly 18 month prior to finishing my PhD.

My PhD work was on sail boat hull design, and it was a fun problem. My advisor was a long time boat designer/builder who had done some designs that were built commercially. We talked sailing constantly at the blackboards, discussing the directions of lift and drag on the sail and the centerboard, respectively, under different sailing situations. But I did not know how to sail myself; I did not have a boat, and never expected to be able to afford such a luxury item. I looked at my work as a purely theoretical exercise.

As many here know, working your way through a PhD program can be fairly stressful, and I was certainly stressed. At this critical moment in my life, my advisor said, "I'm going to add one more requirement for your degree. You have to learn to sail." I was horrified, and voiced all sorts of objections. He was adamant. He said, "I have a small boat on a trailer at my house, and you can use it any time. Just come get it, tow it out to the lake and sail." He said he would teach me, so I finally accepted the inevitable. But then we had to find a time to have the first hands-on lesson.

It was winter time in a fairly mild climate, but that means it was about 40 deg and rain much of the time. We set a date and the postponed it time and again. Finally, on a Tuesday in February, we said, "This Thursday, no matter what the weather." Well, I was coming down with a sour throat, so I went to the quack and got a penicillin shot. When Thursday came, it was abut 42 deg, light rain, and lots of fog. My office mate, my advisor, and I all piled into his Lincoln Continental and pulled the little boat out to the lake.

We set up the mast, got the sail rigged, etc., and my advisor said, "get in," so I stepped aboard. He gave a hard shove, and I was off, by myself. He and my office mate called out, "we'll see you later," and suddenly I was alone on the water in the fog. I began to put into practice the countless hours of blackboard time, and was making some progress. I also spent a lot of time in the water as the little boat seemed to turn turtle on me at the drop of a hat. At one point, where I was well out in the lake, in the water and trying to get clear of the fouled lines, my advisor and my office mate showed up out of the fog on his big boat (33 ft). The came about, passed by again and ask how I was, and then disappeared into the fog again. After about 4 hours of this, I knew how to sail. I was not a proficient racer by any means, but I could keep the boat upright, go generally in the desired direction, and rarely capsized any more.

For the last year and a half of my PhD program, I sailed most Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, alone, on the little boat. I became very proficient, and would just sail furiously, going just as fast as I possible could go for about 3 hours each day. It was a wonderful stress reliever. As I look back now, I realize that my advisor did all of this quite purposefully. He could see that I was about to blow a fuse, and he wanted a way to give me some relief without making it obvious. It worked like a charm, and I have always been grateful for his wisdom and insight in this situation.

About the time I had my real hands-on sailing lesson, I received a phone call at my school office (I was a TA) from my wife's physician. He said that I should come see him in the next couple of days. So the next day, I got on my bicycle and rode to the clinic where he gave me the news. He told me that my wife had a life threatening disease that was little understood, so I should get prepared to deal with that. I was a TA, making the grand sum of $400/month, with no heath insurance, so I was scared out of my wits. After thinking for a few days, I concluded that I would have to drop out of the PhD program and look for employment that would get me into a group health insurance program. I went to the department head to tell him that I would be soon dropping out. I told him what the situation was, and he did not say too much, only, "Don't do anything yet."

He called me in a day later and told me that he had a solution. He would give me a raise, all the way to $1100 per month (in the 1960s!) so that I could get on the university faculty health insurance plan; pay level was the entry point go/no go criterion. He said, "It will just be for one month, then you'll be cut back to $400 per month, but if you have signed up by that time, you'll be in." We could say that he bent the rules for me; I think that is pretty clear. But he could see that I was good as gone if something was not done, and he had the means to fix the problem. He was not a fellow I thought of as a compassionate person, but he certainly helped me along.

These two senior men came to my rescue when I really needed it. They could see the need, and they could see how to solve the problems, while still maintaining their apparently gruff, severe appearances. I would not have made it to the end without their help.

 

[jim hardy]

Where do we post them ?
I will never forget this event i related in a 2013 post .
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/dc-motors-seem-to-have-shorted-rotors.702948/#post-4455199
... cleaned it up a little...

It was 1964, in Missouri...
I was a college freshman trying to get an old $50 car going, a 1951 Chrysler New Yorker.
Generator wasn't charging the battery. So i took the generator apart.
I was puzzled by the seemingly short circuited rotor, thinking since the commutator segments were insulated from one another they shouldn't be connected.
I'd asked some upperclassmen about it to no avail. So I cleaned the armature up as best I could and carried it into my EE professor's office,
Professor James Grimm was an elderly gray haired gentleman with round Harry Truman spectacles who always wore a white shirt and bow tie. I looked like a grease monkey so fully expected to be thrown out on my ear.

Instead, his face lit up . He swept a pile of papers off his desk and pulled a multimeter from a drawer. He grabbed an ancient 1920-ish textbook off his shelf and opened it to a fold-out drawing at least a yard long. The drawing showed lap and wave wound armatures , had explanatory notes about pitch, and I got a quick introduction to DC machines and commutation.
It quickly became clear my trouble was not in the generator so Prof Grimm left me with two practical pieces of advice:
1. It's difficult to load test a car generator on the workbench. If it'll motor when connected across a battery it's probably okay. If at night the headlights get brighter when you come off idle, the whole charging system is probably working okay.
2. The university library has a book that he knew was a good one on automotive electrical systems.

So I thanked him, apologized for the grease&grime we'd got on his white shirt and started out his door toward the library. To my surprise he clapped an arm over my shoulder, gave me a quick hug and said "You'll get it going". .

Sure enough it was a 1930-ish book that described exactly my Chrysler charging system - six volt positive ground generator with three coil electromechanical voltage regulator. From it I learned how to set the air gaps and tension on the regulator coil springs, and how to burnish the 'dancing contacts'.
Now THAT was educational - you can literally feel with your fingertips that regulator doing its job so it quickly becomes intuitive how it works. It's easy to visualize the magnetic forces at play balancing measured voltage and current against spring tension making the contact vibrate about equilibrium. It's an electromechanical analog computer doing closed loop control of the generator output via its field . And you can feel it working with your fingertips !

Setting the voltage coil was easy, i had feeler gages and a nice Triplett 630 voltmeter.
Lacking a 30 amp ammmeter I had to figure out some way to set the current coil . .
I figured with all accessories running and high beam headlights the car's demand was about twenty five amps. With everything on I.pushed on the voltage coil spring to call for max voltage, then set the current control spring tension for about six amps of net charge by the dashboard ammeter. ( A '51 Chrysler doesn't have a lot of accessories - just a radio, heater fan, dome light and windshield wipers...)

Success... Drove that old Chrysler to Florida for spring break!

Point of all that is ,
One learns a lot by taking things apart to figure out why they work. It ties your theory to your practical reinforcing both.

Professor James Grimm of Rolla Missouri was one DOGGONE PRACTICAL educator who rejoiced in his students' growth. He was as adept with nuts and bolts of machinery as he was with Laplace.
I'll never forget him.

old jim

 

[berkeman]

First -- I already purchased Oroduin's new book through the PF link and I'm very much enjoying working my way through the early chapters. Orodruin's approach is much more intuitive for me, compared to the last book on this subject that I self-studied a number of years ago. Thanks, Orodruin.

Second -- I don't mean for what I'm about to post to be bragging or self-congratulation. The question was about your most amazing educational experience, and although I've had many both as a student and as a tutor, the class I'll post about really was seminal in my education and in my life. As folks who have read my Mentor Biography know, I went from a small high school where I didn't have to study, to the University system where I found out quickly that I needed to do a lot more work to do well. The class experience below came at the end of my sophomore year, after I had buckled down and studied much harder and better. It was a validation of my new approach in school and in life...
I originally enrolled at UC Davis in northern California as an Engineering major, and the first two years of that major involved general Engineering classes and a mix of undergraduate Physics classes. As an Engineering student, you were only required to take a few of the Physics undergraduate classes in the first two years before you formalized your major, but I took every Physics class that I could, because I found them challenging, and because I found that I really enjoyed Physics and I enjoyed being able to calculate and understand how the real world worked.

At UCD back then, there was a series of 5 undergrad frosh-soph technical Physics classes that you could take. The A-C-E classes were mandatory, and the B and D classes were optional. I took all of them. Now it looks like they have changed them down to 4 classes, but the last class is the one that I want to post about.

http://physics.ucdavis.edu/academics/physics-courses

9D. Modern Physics (4)
Lecture - 3 hours; discussion - 1.5 hours. Prerequisite: course 9C [or 9HD] and Mathematics 22A; Mathematics 22B recommended (may be taken concurrently). Introduction to physics concepts developed since 1900. Special relativity, quantum mechanics, atoms, molecules, condensed matter, nuclear and particle physics. Not open for credit to students who have completed course 9HB, 9HC, or 9HE. GE credit: SciEng | SE.- III. (III.)

Since I had taken the first 4 classes of the series, and done pretty well in them (A+ to B+), I felt pretty good about the final class in the series. The instructor turned out to be a pretty amazing professor, who set high standards for himself and his TAs in teaching the class, but he also addressed pretty hard material and gave very hard homework and exam questions.

The professor teaching the class was pretty extraordinary (IIRC, his name was Professor Reed. Thank you Dr. Reed.). He was a very accomplished researcher at UCD, and was also very dedicated to teaching. He had a good number of very dedicated TAs in this large class (200-300 students), and he let eveybody know that all exam scores would be posted within 24 hours of the exam (there was no Internet back then, keep in mind). He and the TAs would work at grading the exams right away after the exam was done, and they were amazing at how quickly the scores and score distributions were posted.

The first day of class, he handed out a list of the 200 or so questions that we could expect on the midterms and finals, and I started working my way throgh them. They were organized by midterm, so you could focus on each midterm's problems as you studied, The final was on all of the problems, obviously

One of the best univeristy experiences of my life came on the first midterm, when I got 97/100 on the exam, and the class average was 50/100. After struggling in university to get back up to the achievement level that I felt in my (too easy) high school, it was a wonderful validation of how hard work plus inborn abilities can result in good things. What a wonderful feeling.

I did well on the rest of the midterms, but there were still a few problems in the handout that I was having trouble figuring out. Professor Reed held a large study session for the whole class a few days before the final exam, where he worked through some of the problems on the handout that were confusing some of the students. I remember trying to ask about one of the problems that I was not able to figure out, and he replied, "We can try to cover that one later, but let's deal with some of the more basic problems first (he winked)". I realized that most of the 300 other students were struggling at a much more basic level with the class, and decided to leave the study session and try again on my own. I heard another student say as I was leaving, "Maybe we should go study with him..." LOL

In the final, sure enough one of the hardest problems in the handout was included, and it was one of the ones that I hadn't been able to solve yet. As I had learned to do, I skipped over it and did the problems that were easy for me, then the problems that were harder but do-able. Then I went back to the hardest ones, and solved all but that last, vexing problem. I calmed myself down, saw that I had time, and then finally worked my way into an insight into the problem that I had not seen before. In the end, it all fell out and was obvious finally, and I felt a tremendous relief and pleasure in finally solving it.

Mind you, I'm sitting in the middle of a 300 student lecture hall, taking a final exam with everybody under lots of pressure. I finally had solved a vexing physics problem that I had spent dozens of hours trying to figure out, and I'd done it in the final exam. I sat back, smiled, and laughed softly to myself at the relief of having finally figured the problem out. And then I realized where I was sitting, and how the students sitting next to me were looking at me like I was out of my mind (laughing at the end of a very stressful final exam under pressure). And I looked down at the bottom of the lecture hall, and saw one of the great TAs who was super-helpful throughout the class, and he was looking up at me and smiling. I think he knew that I had finally solved a very hard exam problem that had been vexing me.

Anyway, My most increcible educational experience was that undergrad Physics class at UC Davis where I scored at the top of my class of amazing physics and engineering majors, and managed to figure out one of the hardest schoolwork problems I've ever faced, and did it real-time in the final exam. The professor and his TAs were very dedicated and amazing, which added to the whole experience.

Sorry for the long post

 

[opus]

Well mine may seem obvious for some, but I'll post anyway!

Throughout my k-12 experience, I went to somewhere around 15 different schools. Some were in Utah, some were in Nevada, and some were in Oklahoma. To this day, I don't know why we moved around so much. However, between the 1st and 3rd grades, I was at one school. I did well in all of my classes, and made some great friends. After that, I was regularly hopping around to different schools and making new friends.

I can make friends fairly easily, as I think I'm a friendly guy. So this was never a problem for me when it came to moving. What started to cause damage, and turn into a disastrous snowball effect was the fact that every time I went to a new school, the curriculum was different, the texts were different, the classrooms, the teachers...everything. This was especially difficult when we moved in the middle of a school year. It was like reading a book, and having someone move the bookmark when you're not looking.

By about the 5th grade, I had enough. I stopped trying to transition and to do well. I remember the specific incident that had me throw in the towel. It was in Mrs. Wallups class when she was teaching us long division. I hadn't the slightest clue what she was talking about so I just gave up. It all snowballed from there.

By the time I started 7th grade, in a new city and a new school, I found out how to "mechanically" reproduce problems in a way that would get me to at least pass my classes. I would memorize a single problem, and anything that looked like it I would try to replicate. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't.
By now I had begun to truly despise math. I would come up with excuses for why it was okay to be terrible at it. "I'll never use this crap", I told myself.

By the 9th grade, I had "passed" Algebra I with a D. The next school year, I transferred schools and they considered a D as a failing grade. So I retook it in the 10th grade, and got a C. I also took Geometry and my teacher would come to class stoned and sleep at his desk. He gave us all passing grades, even though I had never touched the book. I hated math, so I couldn't have cared less about how I passed the class. By 11th grade, I took Algebra II and received a C-. I would have failed if it wasn't for the extra credit we would get for completing Sudoku puzzles.

In the state where I went to high school, an "exit exam" of sorts is required to graduate. This is required for all students, whether they passed their classes or not. I failed the math section of this test in a spectacular fashion. If I remember correctly, it said I had an 8th grade math level. So for my senior year of high school, I was put into a remedial math class. This class was designed to help students pass the exit exam, which I did by the end of the year. By the time I graduated, I had the impression that I was just dumb and would never understand math, and made it okay with myself.

After high school, I enrolled in college, did two weeks, then walked to the Navy recruiters office. Sometime throughout my Naval career, I picked up a deep interest in physics. I did well in the Physics Intro course in high school, as it had minimal math, and I loved the material. And while I was in the Navy, I started reading "mathless" physics books. One such example was The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics by James Kakalios. I loved this book so much I read it twice, and actually took notes on the second time around.

After reading these books, I wanted to learn more about the physical concepts. The actual how and why, not just analogies and watered down descriptions. However, I knew that would require an extensive mathematical background, and of course that wasn't me. So I went to Barnes and Noble and got a few books. They were Pre-Algebra and Algebra I. I would do a little bit each day, and eventually I got decent.

Over time, I actually started to really like doing the math. As soon as I got home, I would do about an hour of math, then another hour at the end of the night. This went on until it was time for me to re-enlist in the Navy. But the math and physics bug had its hooks in me, and I started to consider going to college full time.

Fast forward to last August, where I'm out of the Navy, going to college full time, and started my first math class since high school. It was a "College Algebra Prep" class, which I guess you could equate to a little bit of Algebra I and a little bit of Algebra II. I scored a 200/200 on the final, and passed the class with a 99.7%. Now, I'm taking College Algebra as well as Trigonometry, and doing well in both.

What I learned from this experience has been two fold. One is that I love math. The second is that math is like a language- you need to learn the rules, when to use them, how they work, and build from there. If you don't understand something, there's a good chance it's because you've misinterpreted something, or have assumed something which is not true. It's not because you are dumb. I always thought that I hated it because I was never any good at it. But in reality, it was that I just didn't have a base to work from which made me terrible at it, which made me hate it even more.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

I was in Mrs. Kates 4th grade math class at TH Watkins Elementary in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Mrs. Kates caught me lying about having done my math homework, so she ordered me out into the hall and told me to grab my ankles. Three swift swats with a wooden paddle were applied where I needed it the most. No pain, no gain ...

I didn't see the beauty or promise in mathematics enough for the carrot to be effective motivation until many years later, but Mrs. Kates' application of "the stick" kept me from falling so far behind that my career choices would be limited to "digging ditches" (her words) or working in the bar and restaurant business (job experience from age 11-19).

 

[Orodruin]

I finally had solved a vexing physics problem that I had spent dozens of hours trying to figure out, and I'd done it in the final exam.

Speaking of strange times to solve vexing problems ... When I first started university, I took a special edition of the introductory math courses. The final exam was the same, but in order to get credit for the special edition we needed to solve a bunch of additional homework problems that were probably the most difficult ones I had seen to that date. We thought about them a lot. The day before one of the deadlines I was still missing a solution to one of the problems. I took a long walk through the woods to clear my head on the way home, but got no additional insights and went to bed anguished by the prospect of not giving a full set of solutions (I would still have passed, but it bothered me). Well, the subconscious works in amazing ways sometimes. I woke up very drowsy around 3 am with a solution in mind that I literally had dreamed up. I reached for pen and paper and quickly scribbled it down before going back to sleep. When I woke up I found the notes I had made in the middle of the night. The solution had some flaws in it, but the general idea was valid and I could solve the problem with just a few additional corrections.

 

[member 587159]

Speaking of strange times to solve vexing problems ... When I first started university, I took a special edition of the introductory math courses. The final exam was the same, but in order to get credit for the special edition we needed to solve a bunch of additional homework problems that were probably the most difficult ones I had seen to that date. We thought about them a lot. The day before one of the deadlines I was still missing a solution to one of the problems. I took a long walk through the woods to clear my head on the way home, but got no additional insights and went to bed anguished by the prospect of not giving a full set of solutions (I would still have passed, but it bothered me). Well, the subconscious works in amazing ways sometimes. I woke up very drowsy around 3 am with a solution in mind that I literally had dreamed up. I reached for pen and paper and quickly scribbled it down before going back to sleep. When I woke up I found the notes I had made in the middle of the night. The solution had some flaws in it, but the general idea was valid and I could solve the problem with just a few additional corrections.

This is very relatable, although I mostly forget to write down a solution in the middle of the night and then there is regret the day after...

 

[jasonRF]

I started reading to my daughters when they were infants, and we read every evening after dinner for many years. I remember reading to my elder daughter one day when she was between 3 and 4. After the book was finished she clearly wanted to read another but I had another commitment, and I said something to the effect of, "one day you will be able to read that book to yourself." She had a wide-eyed look of wonder on her face and said, "I can learn to read!?" It had never occurred to her before. She became obsessed, and within a year had learned to read. That was a dozen years ago and her nose is still in a book most of the time.

jason

 

[lekh2003]

I started reading to my daughters when they were infants, and we read every evening after dinner for many years. I remember reading to my elder daughter one day when she was between 3 and 4. After the book was finished she clearly wanted to read another but I had another commitment, and I said something to the effect of, "one day you will be able to read that book to yourself." She had a wide-eyed look of wonder on her face and said, "I can learn to read!?" It had never occurred to her before. She became obsessed, and within a year had learned to read. That was a dozen years ago and her nose is still in a book most of the time.

jason

I can feel this story. A similar situation occurred with me around this age. I have never left books since.

 

[fresh_42]

I started reading to my daughters when they were infants, and we read every evening after dinner for many years. I remember reading to my elder daughter one day when she was between 3 and 4. After the book was finished she clearly wanted to read another but I had another commitment, and I said something to the effect of, "one day you will be able to read that book to yourself." She had a wide-eyed look of wonder on her face and said, "I can learn to read!?" It had never occurred to her before. She became obsessed, and within a year had learned to read. That was a dozen years ago and her nose is still in a book most of the time.

jason

Reminds me of when my then six year old daughter came home and proudly presented me, that she could now count backwards. As she'd reached zero, I asked her why she stopped and let her walk backwards during her countdown for illustration. Ten minutes later she knew negative numbers. (I hate answers which are only a future promise. It's a matter of language and time, not a matter of age.)

 

[nomadreid]

I have ordered your book, but I presently live in a country where the post if very iffy, and I have had more than one book get lost in the chaotic post office of said country, so I will throw in my hat with three short (and true) stories. However, since multiple entries are not allowed, take one (say, the first one) as my entry, and the other two as fun... at least for me.

Background: I have taught secondary level (high school, for Americans) mathematics and physics, and occasionally other sciences, in different parts of the world. It is a cliché, but nonetheless true, that teachers cherish those times when their innovation brings visible results. Here are three of my cherished instances.

First story: In one country, for applying for the job, I was told that I would be giving a sample lesson, taking a lesson from a teacher there who would tell me about five minutes before the class what the topic was. OK. Topic: vectors. The regular teacher said that it was a bit of a chore for the pupils. I had a few minutes before class to ask for some ropes; I got them. The kids filed in, looking bored. After the obligatory but short introduction by the regular teacher, I threw one kid one end of a rope, and threw another student on the other end of the class another end of another rope, and yelled "pull!"

"What?" was the students' reply. "Pull!" They pulled a bit. I pulled back, and said, "Can't you do better than that? Pull hard!" The class was amused at this double tug of war, and woke up. After a moment I said, "Force!" "Huh?" was the reply. "You're each exerting force! Are you pulling with the same force?" And so on, with me throwing the ends of the rope to different students, as I introduced the different aspects of vectors, occasionally writing the numbers on the board, and so forth. No bored students, and they got the concepts. Later, the teacher told me that they did better on the topic after my class. That was my reward (besides the fact that I got the job).

Second story: I was sent into the countryside in the Ivory Coast to teach the physical and biological sciences (in French: "les sciences naturelles"). When I got there, I asked to see their laboratory or laboratories. The director proudly told me that they had a well-stocked lab, with lots of expensive equipment. This sounded hopeful, but then I was shown the lab.

Thankfully, someone had had the foresight some years earlier to cover the equipment, as it was now all covered with dust, apparently not having been used by any recent science teachers. The equipment was indeed impressive... except that none of it worked. Each piece of equipment needed replacement parts, and the school would have had to order them from France, which was not going to happen.

OK, I covered the equipment back up. No problem. I made my own equipment. The first physics experiment had the students comparing the experimental results of finding the center of gravity (by blancing on their fingers) of pieces of wood that I had made into various shapes (it took me a few hours of hefty sawing) with the theoretical results they got of finding the shapes' centroids. That turned out to be a great success (also as an introduction to the concept of an experiment, which my predecessors had neglected). My other experiments were similar. As far as the lecture part of the course, I noticed that their method, encouraged by my predecessors, was to memorize the book and/or the teacher's notes, and to spit it back. I made a rule: on a test, if you give me verbatim what is in the book or from the board, or write a word or expression that you yourself cannot define, or write in a style that a younger student could not understand, then it receives no credit. At first they did not believe me, until I gave a few zeros. That is when they started to think!

Third story: in Colombia, I taught at an international school in which the Year 10's (9th graders, for Americans) were divided up into three classes for physics. I had two, and another teacher had the third. Over a quarter of the classes were devoted to experiments (as per the International Baccalaureate guidelines). My first experiments contained the full instructions for the experiments, as did the other teacher's. But whereas he continued this pattern, I slowly left out more and more parts of the instructions in experiment preparation, as they slowly understood what constituted an experiment, and they had more and more liberty to improvise. (This got me a reputation with the janitor, after a number of times that the circuit breakers flipped and after the fire alarm went off once, but despite appearances I did not endanger the students.)

At the end, they could make up their own experiments, as long as they submitted the proposals to me beforehand and got my approval.) The following year, a Dutch teacher of the Year 11's (10th grade) told me that he could tell which students had had me, and which ones had had the other teacher, because when he announced the purpose of an experiment, immediately the students who had had me got up and started getting equipment together, whereas the ones who had had the other teacher continued to sit there waiting for further instructions.

 

[jasonRF]

Reminds me of when my then six year old daughter came home and proudly presented me, that she could now count backwards. As she'd reached zero, I asked her why she stopped and let her walk backwards during her countdown for illustration. Ten minutes later she knew negative numbers. (I hate answers which are only a future promise. It's a matter of language and time, not a matter of age.)

Nice story.

Agreed that it is not a matter of age. My younger daughter had no interest in reading until she was significantly older. We never pushed her because we didn't think that the exact timing mattered that much. At some point she wanted to read novels, which is what motivated her to spend significant time reading on her own. The first novel was slow-going of course, but she slogged through it and has never stopped reading. It turns out that she didn't think that the books written for young readers were interesting enough to waste time on; she would rather be outside playing on the monkey bars! The relative delay had no impact on her academic success at all. She was just motivated by different things than her sister.

Back on subject ...

I think that part of the art of teaching is figuring out what motivates the students to want to learn and go beyond the required material. One teacher that did that for me was a graduate student teaching assistant I had for the second and third semesters of the introductory physics sequence I was required to take as an engineering major. He seemed to have endless office hours and was able to explain things in different ways to help the variety of students in class. But what really impressed me was how we could ask him almost any question and he could start from first principles and derive the answer on the board. The more challenging the question the more fun he seemed to have working out the answer. His skill and attitude inspired me to want to learn the material that well, too, and as time permitted started to work through selected material in a number of my classes to learn it to that depth. The improvement in my ability to think physically and apply the mathematics I had learned to model and solve problems has served me well both in undergrad/grad school and in my career in research and development in industry. This has become a lifelong habit. The subjects I have worked through to that level have certainly `stuck' better (especially with regards to what assumptions different results are based on), and I still find myself working through first-principles derivations whenever possible (which isn't as often as I would like!) as I new learn subjects for work.

Note: I know that this is more than one post for me in this thread, but none of my posts should be considered for the contest anyway. The book looks very good and I might purchase it at some point, but I already have a ton of applied math books and would rather the book go to someone more likely to spend real time working through it.

 

[HAYAO]

I wish to enter the contest but I live in Japan so if shipping to Japan is not possible (perhaps for import/export restrictions), then please count me out on this.
My educational experience is much broader than the rest of the people here because I am going to talk about two countries with significantly different style of education, namely the US and Japan. Conclusion first, what I've learned in the US helped (helping) me in research. The details will come later. This experience spans much longer in time than the specific experiences that many people are describing here, and thus it is somewhat abstract. Nonetheless, I hope that this will show why it is important that a student is taught a concept well and given a degree of freedom from young age in approaching problems.

I've only experienced three months of elementary school in Japan and quickly moved to the US. Initially, I had a lot of problems because I did not speak English, and barely understood 10% of what the teachers were saying. Fortunately, the ESL class in the school was very good at teaching English. Within a year, I was able to understand the class and make tons of friends. But I was like Feynman made very dumb, who didn't really care much about grammar, spelling, and vocabulary, and often wrote in a colloquial manner. Consequently, my English grades were mediocre at most and was always between B and B+. Otherwise, I had good grades, particularly in math, science, and social studies. I maintained good grades for these three subjects and was in honor class for math and science (being honor in social studies required having good grades in English as well due to class arrangements).

The education in the district I lived in was well funded. The teachers gave out a lot of assignments, homework, and tests, mainly with the core basics and concept of what was being taught. They were quite easy because it only contained the basics. The project/essay assignments were different. They often had very simple theme, and provided freedom to the students in their approach. One can make a great project while one can make a substandard one, and this depended entirely on the individual. The grading criteria was explicit, which one of them included "uniqueness and creativity". One must put considerable amount of effort to achieve good grades, but this did not always mean the best grade. I was not the most creative person, and I saw more unique ones (but was not well polished and got an average score). Essays were also concerned more about how well one follows their conclusion with evidence using logic. The formal correctness of the conclusion itself was not necessarily the priority though important. I learned to enjoy these projects and essays.

This all changed when I returned to Japan when I was eight grade (3rd year in junior high shcool in Japan). I once again had a lot of problems because my Japanese was well below the standard of my grade. The problem was that I could not read some of the "Kanjis" (Chinese characters) and fully memorize the Japanese equivalent to the technical terms that I learned in English. All of my grades plunged. I was all of the sudden a below-average student. I quickly recovered to high-average within a year, but the next step was to adapt the new educational philosophy.

In Japan, the teachers were less involved with the students. We had much less homework, assignments, and projects/essays. Instead, we had "big" tests once or twice per term. The basics were taught in the class with very few assignments, and the teachers expected you to understand them during class. If not, then one must study on his/her own. This most of the time meant solving basic problems on the textbook. Most students could not catch up, and gave up trying to understand while the teacher continued. The homework were much more difficult and many students came the next day unable to solve the problem. The tests were purposefully made difficult so that the average score would be around 60. Even the projects were somewhat restricted, that is, one is expected to reach an already determined conclusion. Some of these set conclusions were academically questionable; one can easily interpret them differently with good evidence. Projects and essays were no longer enjoyable to me. I lost all of my confidence.

I threw away what I've learned in the US, and reconstructed my studying habits. I accepted that by imitating the "model thought process" to reach the same conclusion that was being expected from the teachers. My grades exponentially grew around mid-second grade in senior high (11th grade in the US?). By doing this, and I was accepted to one of the prestigious national universities in Japan under the so-called "standard entrance exam". Me and another person was the only two in the entire grade in my school that was able to do this, and also the only returnee within the memory of my teachers in the history of my school. I regained my confidence.

This new studying habits did not help me, nor anyone else, in college. Especially in the lab, you are not only expected to solve a problem, but also to make a problem that no one have ever asked. In order to make a new problem, one must understand the underlying concept and the current available knowledge. Unfortunately, the educational style of Japan forces you to do tons and tons of problems, instead of trying to really understand a concept. One can still answer Japanese style exams without understanding the core concept by memorization. That didn't work in research for obvious reasons. Basically, Japanese educational style relies heavily on applications than fundamental concepts. As such, Japanese are good at applying established ideas that was derived from certain concept, but not so good at producing something new based on the underlying concept, much less creating a new concept.

I decided to once again revisit the approach back in the US and restudied everything, but focusing on the basics and the concepts. My ability to read and write English also greatly accelerated my understanding. I also maintained my freedom in the approach. My advisors initially frowned upon my approach and was strongly against it, but I quickly produced a lot of new results. I may be wrong at times, of course, but I hope that my approach provide new understanding in the area of research.

In conclusion, one should be more focused on genuinely understanding concepts than just-do-it-and-memorize type of approach when coming across something new. However, beyond that, one should be given good freedom in approaching a problem. That is where all the new things start. That is where creativity emerges. The US education was the greatest educational experience I had that spanned 7.5 years. Many people believe that Japanese are supposed to be very well-educated people, but Japanese style of education is more suited for scoring high on exams, rather than research. I know that the US have tons of their own problems about education, but at least the district I was in was particularly good at educating students in a way more suitable for research. I hope that Japan reestablish their education system, or else they will fall behind (or already starting to do so).

Last month, I had my Ph.D. defense. I don't know the results yet, but hopefully I made it.Wow...that was long. I wish I was a better writer.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Great entries everyone! btw, Happy Birthday @Orodruin

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

We've decided on @Dr.D to win the book. Thanks to all participants with so many inspiring stories! We will grant gold memberships to you!