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Fingerpainting

By Kellnerin (Mon Feb 14, 2005 at 06:23:27 AM EST) (all tags)

In math class, my second year of high school, we sometimes did proofs. When a student was called to the board to share his solution to a problem, and got to a point where he had already reached the goal but kept going anyway, our teacher would interrupt and say, "Stop right there. You're fingerpainting."

He wasn't ridiculing anyone but himself.

This was the story he would tell, by way of explanation:

It was fingerpainting day back in kindergarten for young Warren (for that was his name). Each kid got a large piece of paper and the teacher went around and squirted generous amounts of paint on each one. Then, along with the rest of the class, Warren got to moving the paint around on the paper. He stopped to look at it, and it wasn't quite right, so he kept working at it. A while longer and it still wasn't there yet -- the paint was beginning to dry by now and getting harder and harder to move around, yet he continued, undeterred.

Meanwhile the teacher was walking around the classroom looking approvingly at each student's artwork. At last she came to our hero, who was still wrestling with the muse. "That's very good, Warren," she said, picking up the paper to admire it. She held the paper upright as if to display it for everyone.

All the paint slid right off the paper onto the floor.

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Fingerpainting | 14 comments (14 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback

What a great metaphor! by ana (2.00 / 0) #1 Mon Feb 14, 2005 at 08:24:51 AM EST

When I was an undergraduate, still wet behind the ears and full of enthusiasm, I thought perhaps I wanted to be a mathematician. I actually knew what a Hilbert space is.

Aside:
There's a conference of mathematicians. All the Grand Old Men of the field are in the front row for a talk given by some prize recipient, a young, up and coming, up-and-comer.
``Let H be a Hilbert space,'' says the lecturer.
Hilbert leans over to his neighbor and asks, in a loud stage whisper, ``What's a Hilbert space?''

Anyway, after teaching for a few years, I found that most of my detailed knowledge of mathematics had slid off the paper. So I became a physicist instead.

K5: Because that dead horse ain't gonna beat itself --Armaphine

Ya' know my love, that's how by greyrat (2.00 / 0) #2 Mon Feb 14, 2005 at 08:50:33 AM EST

everybody gets into physics. My dad the former mathematician cum physics teacher developed the corollary that all the best Computer 'Science' professionals come from the most outlandish fields of study, like: Fine Arts, Literature, Music, and ...wait for it... Physical Education. It wasn't 'till I was much older that I realized how right he was.
~ ~ ~
_{Keeping the conversation in the gutter since 1998}
Remember: There is absolutely no correlation or causation amongst intelligence, power, talent and wealth.

[ Parent ]

: my dad ... by Kellnerin (2.00 / 0) #4 Mon Feb 14, 2005 at 09:14:37 AM EST

got into physics because his mother wouldn't pay for him to go to school unless he studied something "useful". And then (after a stint of teaching math) he got out, and became an art historian instead.
On the other hand, my mother, who got into programming when that meant punch cards and debugging by watching the blinkenlights? Geographer.

--
... though I was always told that I never worked to my potential I assumed someone somewhere was. --blixco
[ Parent ]

this teacher by Kellnerin (4.00 / 1) #3 Mon Feb 14, 2005 at 09:10:26 AM EST

was da Man (both literally and figuratively, I guess -- he was also head of the department). He also had a story about how he once almost bought a cow at auction, but I don't remember what the lesson there was, if any.

I do remember his sales pitch to get us to sign up for an annual math contest. They'd take place on Saturday; entry fee was 25 cents. "Where else can you get 3 hours of fun for a quarter?"

--
... though I was always told that I never worked to my potential I assumed someone somewhere was. --blixco
[ Parent ]

Had this geometry by blixco (4.00 / 2) #5 Mon Feb 14, 2005 at 09:45:33 AM EST

teacher in High School (my only strength at Math is proofs, by the way) who was this east Texas guy. He was a coach for one of the teams, and helped announce at the football games. Had this great drawl, those really slow mannerisms often mistaken for stupid.

He'd call us up for a proof, and we'd get to the point of it, and always we'd look at him and ask "that's it, right?" and he'd say "Is it?" then we'd have to spend a few minutes justifying the answer. The cholos and cholas in my class thought he did this because he didn't know the answer himself, that he was having us prove it for him.

One day a kid comes in with some seriously terrifying math problem, straight from his father, who was an engineer for Rocket Science Monthly or some such crap, and tells the teacher "I bet you can't solve this."

There's that wind, the tumbleweed rolling by, the sound of High Plains Drifter.

Teacher says "If I can't solve this, y'all get this period off for the rest of the week." Everyone else got really excited, but I had heard that tone of voice before in others.

"If I do solve it, y'all get to do every extra problem in the book for the week, and we get to have a pop quiz over the last four chapters." The tittering died down, and everyone looked to the kid who'd brought the problem in. He was still smiling, confidence shaken only a bit. "He'll never get it, man."

He spent about fifteen minutes filling the board with figures, then pointed out the answer. The kid checks the answer against what his father had written.

They spend a few minutes conferring, the teacher pointing out the high points that matched the kid's document, pointing to shortcuts he'd taken where the kid's dad had drawn it out, longhand.

The rest of the week, in between quizzes and tons of extra work, the teacher told us about his past, when he'd worked for NASA in Houston, had worked on several Apollo missions as a flight technician, a problem solver. He had this whole different aura after that. This round geeky old guy, elevated.
---------------------------------
Journeying through the world
To and fro, to and fro
Cultivating a small field.
-basho

now that by Kellnerin (4.00 / 1) #7 Mon Feb 14, 2005 at 11:57:14 AM EST

is a good story. We had the teachers who blew us away and the ones who left us unimpressed, but never a "stealth" teacher that surprised us in that way. In fact one of my favorite teachers had this endearing arrogance to her that we loved and respected. Her tests were often multiple choice: from A all the way to Z and sometimes beyond.

--
... though I was always told that I never worked to my potential I assumed someone somewhere was. --blixco
[ Parent ]

we like it by dr k (4.00 / 1) #9 Mon Feb 14, 2005 at 12:20:27 PM EST

Maybe we could get some up-and-coming actor for the role, maybe Ron Livingston? If not, we can always get Kevin Bacon. Is there a love story? There needs to be a love story. Here's an idea: the kid -- we can get that kid from The Ring for a few bucks -- has a half sister in her mid-twenties, and she's just gotten divorced, and moved back in with her family, which is just her father and half brother because the mother died of cancer... no, wait, in a car accident. Then the father dies of cancer, and the math professor marries the daughter and they raise the kid together.

:| :| :| :| :|
[ Parent ]

The teacher by blixco (2.00 / 0) #11 Wed Feb 16, 2005 at 07:11:56 PM EST

looked more like the stapler guy from Office Space. Sounded like his character in King of the Hill, too.
---------------------------------
Journeying through the world
To and fro, to and fro
Cultivating a small field.
-basho
[ Parent ]

: Steven Root is my hero. by dr k (4.00 / 1) #13 Wed Feb 16, 2005 at 09:03:43 PM EST

nt

:| :| :| :| :|
[ Parent ]

oof! by moonvine (4.00 / 1) #6 Mon Feb 14, 2005 at 10:47:19 AM EST

Hmmm... it reminds me of me in ninth grade, in between my theatre and debate class, when I had to go to advanced geomery and when I had to go up to the blackboard to do a proof on the board... If there were zeros or circles of any sort involved, I would stand there overwhelmed yet determined to make the damn thing perfect. I never wanted to leave the blackboard with one of those lobsided retarded looking circles or shapes... I know I can't be the only one who noticed those remedial types...

Great story!

I am really happy not to be in that environment anymore : ) My math teachers in high school were nearly not as wise or filled with witty anecdotes as yours. But in college, it was an entirely different story- thank god for that! Maybe it had to do with me not having to do anything I didn't want; remedial circles be damned!

circles by Kellnerin (2.00 / 0) #8 Mon Feb 14, 2005 at 12:04:09 PM EST

One of the skills my mother is proud of, actually, is the ability to draw a freehand circle on the blackboard. Also freehand maps of most countries, though it's been a long time since she needed to do that.

I got lucky, having him for my teacher. It's funny, though -- I wrote about this in my journal for English class a couple years later (which I recently dug up, re-discovering the anecdote) and my English teacher commented that she had a hard time imagining him telling the story. But I assure you he did.

--
... though I was always told that I never worked to my potential I assumed someone somewhere was. --blixco
[ Parent ]

: Freehand circles by ana (4.00 / 1) #10 Mon Feb 14, 2005 at 12:28:09 PM EST

I used to stand a bit closer to the blackboard than the length of my arm, chalk in hand, and holding elbow stiff, whirl the arm around the line joining shoulder to blackboard.
Perfect circle, more or less, every time.
K5: Because that dead horse ain't gonna beat itself --Armaphine
[ Parent ]

finger paint falling off. by calla (2.00 / 0) #12 Wed Feb 16, 2005 at 08:03:10 PM EST

What about the kids that play with their paint until the paper wears through?

How do I set my laser printer on stun?

: that would be me by Kellnerin (4.00 / 1) #14 Thu Feb 17, 2005 at 11:56:16 AM EST

I've done that. Not with paint or even mathematical proofs, but when writing. In the past I've re-re-re-re-re-written stories so many times trying to get the words exactly right, that the story was just ... gone. Literally became lost in the process, fell right through the paper. There are times that I still have to force myself not to do that. Now you know the right answer to the poll, and it's not the one that was most popular.

--
... though I was always told that I never worked to my potential I assumed someone somewhere was. --blixco
[ Parent ]

Fingerpainting | 14 comments (14 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback