Triple A Learning IB Blogs

Have a look at this new approach to a topic that can struggle to engage students. See an assessment and sample of a page from the comic book in Jim Holt’s “Algorithm and Blues“, published in The New York Times.

“Well, this is unexpected — a comic book about the quest for logical certainty in mathematics. The story spans the decades from the late 19th century to World War II, a period when the nature of mathematical truth was being furiously debated. The stellar cast, headed up by Bertrand Russell, includes the greatest philosophers, logicians and mathematicians of the era, along with sundry wives and mistresses, plus a couple of homicidal maniacs, an apocryphal barber and Adolf Hitler.”

I am sure this will get a few students interested in this fascinating and essentially TOK topic. I would like to use the section devoted to Bertrand Russell’s visit to Paris during the 1900 International Congress of Mathematicians. At this conference, Henri Poincaré and David Hilbert – the two greatest mathematicians of the day – argued over the importance of intuition versus proof. An essential TOK discussion!

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