Saturday, November 03, 2007

Formal Call for Napkin, Notes and Other Math Scribblings

Napkins are special: they are easily available in restaurants, cafes, and bars. While regular folks use them to make lists and progress on chores or get telephone numbers and progress human race, researchers use them to do math and progress knowledge. Somewhere between chores, race and knowledge, comes entertainment: there are napkin sketches, napkin writing, napkin art, etc.

I am very excited about math we do in scribbles, on pieces of paper we can easily find: napkins, receipts, business cards, or whatever.

So, here is a formal call for my pet project: please photograph or scan such gems, and mail (smewtoo@gmail.com) them to me, with your story, if you are willing to share, and I will collect them and create an online exhibition of how in these driblets, we force math and methods to progress.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Metoo,

I would very much like to hear of the responses you got to this article.

I think clever note-taking in math is a widely neglected area, and I'm most interested in new approaches to this topic.

My own line of thought (use of mind-map-like notes) can be found in some shorter articles on Scribd.com:
http://www.scribd.com/people/documents/178332

Something else that might be of interest to you:
http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Resources/AoPS_R_A_Mistakes.php

Best regards,
Thomas Teepe

6:00 AM  

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