Some time ago, I went through a proof of the quadratic formula<\/a> with the pre-AP kids. It was part of our notes. I put the proof in their homework. The proof was an extra credit question on their test. At the end of the proof, when we had arrived at our destination, I wrote on the board: QED<\/em>.<\/p>\n I turned to the kids.<\/p>\n “Quod erat demonstrandum<\/em>,” I said. I rolled the r’s. I flattened the vowel sounds. I did my best to sound exotic.<\/p>\n “What’s that!?” a student asked.<\/p>\n “That which was to be shown,” I said. “It’s latin”.<\/p>\n And I repeated it again.<\/p>\n We did another proof a few weeks ago. Frankly these proofs are not so much proofs per se<\/em> as derivations. So yeah. We derived something else. And when we got to the end, I wrote: QED<\/em>.<\/p>\n One of the students said, “Tell us what that stands for again, Mr. Hasan.”<\/p>\n Of course, they knew what it stood for. What they were asking for was the latin<\/em>. They wanted to hear it.<\/p>\n “Quod erat demonstrandum<\/em>,” I said. I rolled the r’s. I flattened the vowel sounds. I did my best to sound exotic.<\/p>\n When I was an undergraduate at the University of Illinois, I took a Differential Equations and Orthogonal Functions<\/em> course from Dr. Langebartel<\/a>. He was awesome, so awesome that when I needed a math elective to finish my minor I chose Tensor Analysis<\/em> simply because he taught it.<\/p>\n Dr. Langebartel once stopped a lecture and asked us, “Who was the greatest mathematician in history?” He waited briefly, but this was a rhetorical question. He answered it himself.<\/p>\n “Eudoxus,” he said.<\/p>\n We were in an auditorium in Altgeld Hall (which is going to get a facelift soon<\/a>). I can still hear his booming voice in that large hall drawing out his sibilants<\/a>: Eudoxxxxxusssss! <\/em>And he told us a story about Eudoxus<\/a>.<\/p>\n It was a surprise to have a professor give historical context in a technical course. No other professors I had did this. He was the one from whom I first learned QED<\/em>. And I still remember how exotic it sounded for him to draw out the latin pronunciation. Clearly my students feel the same way.<\/p>\n My students thank you for those lessons, professor.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" QED 1 Some time ago, I went through a proof of the quadratic formula with the pre-AP kids. It was part of our notes. I put the proof in their homework. The proof was an extra credit question on their test. At the end of the proof, when we had arrived at our destination, I wrote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5677"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5677"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5681,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5677\/revisions\/5681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}QED 2<\/h3>\n
Professor Langebartel<\/h3>\n