Niall MacKay's third post in his mathematics and problem-solving series

It is part of a declinist narrative with a long history to argue that English education is going to hell in a handcart. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results in mathematics are actually rather unexceptional, especially once one has understood that PISA's …[read more]

Niall MacKay shares some further thoughts on problem-solving...

In a previous post I talked about process versus facts in the learning of mathematics, and about problem-solving. What I had in mind there was principally problem-solving in pure mathematics, which together with theorem-proving form the systole and diastole of the subject (see …[read more]

I had a moment of revelation reading Toby Young's pamphlet the other day. I'm sure there are people queuing up to call it simplistic, but it occurred to me that his views are especially dangerously so for mathematics.

His unashamedly Gradgrindian position is that there can be no worthwhile learning of higher thought processes-argument, analysis, abstrac…[read more]