Happy 95th Birthday, Martin Gardner
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I hope I'm carrying on his tradition. I still dip into his books for inspiration, and aspire to write as clearly, elegantly and above all effectively as he did and still does.
Happy Birthday ,Martin Gardner!
There is "bag of tricks" culture of mathematics (http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/2cultures.pdf) where one often stands no chance against a "tricky" problem without prior acquaintance with "tricky" sort of shortcut principle. I was always too slow and never grokked or scored this sort of mathematics. I barely found anything profound or beautiful in Gardner's SciAm columns. They were scary like black magic more than they were interesting. My teachers all from this school just bashed me and didn't told me there is richer structured, theoretical and constructive side to mathematics. The same year I qualified to the International Physics Olympiad I got non passing grade in mathematics, at which point I dropped out of HS, went to do what unexpectedly turned out mathematical physics and now I'm for a degree in pure mathematics, several tantalizing years later than if my teachers were not so enchanted by Gardner's tricks.
I travel a lot, speaking to students all over the UK and beyond, and I've found something. Sometimes to get the audience hooked I'll present a cute little something that's odd, unexpected, or counter-intuitive. Many of the students light up wanting to know more.
But others find their intuition challenged and get very defensive. The result is that they are completely turned off, unwilling to engage. For them I need to take a step back and show that there is ordinary stuff that is of itself intriguing - challenging and fun.
It sounds like you needed to be given more structure, more development, more flow. It's there, but most school teachers don't know about it.
My wife says the impression she was left with from school was that math is just a bag of rules with no unifying theme. The "bag of tricks" is a similar problem.
I hope you're now starting to see the beauty and elegance that comprises the main body, as opposed to the cute wrinkles.
I'd welcome an email from you if you're interested. If you reply to this we'll work out a way to get in touch.
I now know the structure, that's why I "grew" to appreciate Gardner nowadays (albeit now I also find he's doing many things "simple as possible and even simpler" (contrary to the Einstein quote) and thus... still unnecessarily convoluted, so I'm not sure if I like him already).
I know your email, but have nothing of value to say ;]
I'm pleased you've found something you like, and wish you the best.
EDIT: for clarity.
Recreational Mathematics is more or less his 'invention', and I'm sure that through his column he managed to engage lots of people and got them to play with numbers.