Heading East From Albuquerque - Babylonian Word Problems

 The first thing that struck me about this chapter was the comparison not between current and historical word problems themselves, but the people who posed and solved them. As is stated, it's easy to assume many other facts of context when the problem is structured similarly. What is amazing to me is how different many of these contexts are while the questions remain almost identical. Great minds think alike and fools seldom differ!

The categorization of Babylonian problems as largely practical is interesting to me, because I find the idea of a "purely practical" or "purely theoretical" problem to be a bit nonsensical. In practice, no problem that a student faces in real life will be entirely identical to one they are given as an example, so there will always be some amount of transfer of understanding required, from as minimal as changing values to as large as applying a skill in a completely different context.

I feel similarly about the distinction between pure and applied mathematics. Because we cannot see the future, we can't possibly know what applications that which we term pure math may be put to in the future. Similarly, as the reading notes, that math which might at one point have been practical can grow obsolete and only of interest to the "pure mathematicians." It seems to me that, while it is a useful shorthand for grouping ways of thinking, it is not a be-all end-all distinction.

I do agree, however, that generalization is incredibly difficult using only rhetorical algebra. I am a bit at a loss as to how one would generalize without the notion of a symbolic variable and am hopeful that we will discuss this in class on Wednesday. 

There was a definite lack of pictures on my blog, so 

I have included a very cute photo of my cat, Dipper.