On Solving "Problems"

Counting and estimating are no doubt ancient survival skills. And yet, present educational methods tend to downplay these very skills. This breeds senseless innumeracy and social disruption. Jumbling inches with centimeters, for example, can cause a Mars mission to fail. With minor distortion, elementary and high schools (and beyond) teach that all fractions are simple, that all square roots are rational, and that trigonometric functions need be evaluated only for 30, 45, and 60 degrees. We thus inflict threefold damage on our children and students. First, they come to believe that numbers beyond 10 (except for current account deficits) are intuitively inaccessible; second, that answers to all mathematical questions are "formulas'; and third, that the art of estimation merely requires punching keys on a calculator—a dismal sort of black magic. These beliefs I wish to expose in the form of eight short numerical tales.