Dish
out slips of paper to the group. Each member thinks of a common
phrase and writes it on the slip. Fold it up. Throw it into the
middle of the table with the rest. Mix them up. Each member picks out
a slip.
We now
each have a phrase on which to base a vignette. Take that phrase
literally and see where it takes you.
Here’s
my attempt. Can you guess what the phrase is?
He
decided he was a genius. He sat in the classroom denouncing
Pythagoras theorem.
“This
shouldn’t work,” he told his teacher. “It shouldn’t add up
the way it does.”
The
teacher tapped the triangle on the whiteboard. “It doesn’t
matter,” he said. “You don’t need to ask why it works. You
don’t need to work it out. If you accept it, you’re half-way
there.”
John
looked at the triangle. His future hinged on his ability to grasp
mathematics- the art of thought, of cognition. I must do this,
thought John.
He
closed his eyes. He had no idea who Pythagoras was. He sounded Greek.
He imagined he’d be ancient- Greece has its ancient history. His
mind soared.
He saw
himself flying over open scrubland in baking heat. In the distance: a
white foaming border of surf. Below him: stone statues of dis-robed
people and elegantly carved columns.
From
the horizon, a giant line appeared. It moved, tipping upward,
revealing a flat triangle. Cheesy eighties electronics filled the
desert. It was right-angled, like the shapes Pythagoras obsessed
over. A synthesised whooshing announced the appearance of two purple
squares on the shorter edges of the triangle. They were labelled “A”
and “B”.
An
orange square burst into view on the edge of the hypotenuse, labelled
“C”, as the electronica hit a rousing crescendo. An LCD display
ran through the Greek sky.
A
SQUARED + B SQUARED = C SQUARED
He got
it.
Did
you get it? Probably not. I didn't exactly stick to the script. The phrase I got was…
“Where
there’s a will, there’s a way.”
I
really could not think of anything. I just had to write something as
quickly as possible. Maybe daydreaming and electro-pop can help
people grasp mathematical concepts. But again, probably not.
