Ars chats with math teacher Ben Orlin about his book Change Is the Only Constant.
Finally, I decided to build it around all my favorite stories that touched on calculus, stories that get passed around in the faculty lounge, or the things that the professor mentions off-hand during a lecture. I realized that all those little bits of folklore tapped into something that really excited me about calculus. They have a time-tested quality to them where they’ve been told and retold, like an old folk song that has been sharpened over time.
And this is roughly how memory and teaching has always worked. Stories and repetition.
–November 11, 2019 at 09:56AM