Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Life of Fred

But if you want to entertain yourself, and you enjoy both reading and maths? We haven't tried Fred, but DS loves Lucy and Stephen Hawking's George books, which do something similar with physics.

I tried looking up some information on "Life of Fred" last night and found some PDF's of the books. I am not impressed. Partly because my son would absolutely hate the format. Second because I see a LOT of religious content in the short amount I read. And most important because author doesn't seem to really understand higher level math or logic as illustrated by this passage. Mathematicians don't need to "believe" in infinite sets they use proofs, the proofs are just something you wouldn't normally see in an Algebra I text.

- Life of Fred Algebra I by Stanley F. Schmidt
http://www.stanleyschmidt.com/FredGauss/sample%20pages%20BAX.pdf

Not to get too far off, but in the same vein of social math, has any one tried Danica McKellar's middle school math series for girls (styled like Cosmo/Seventeen)?

http://www.mathdoesntsuck.com/

The series is written to incorporate situations which require math to arrive at a resolution, thereby helping a student to make connections so that math is relevant. The point of structuring the books this way is: as the children learn math they do not wonder, "When will we ever use this stuff?", a question which many teachers appear unable to answer.

Like any tool or curriculum, LoF works for many but may not be a good fit for all.

On the contrary, the question of which, if any, infinite objects we should believe in in the sense of being prepared to adopt reasoning systems that imply and work with them is utterly mathematically respectable. Here's one starting point:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finitism

Admittedly, the passage you quoted isn't all that illuminating!

Actually, in my Graduate Math Analysis class at a top 10 Engineering School, my world renowned professor, as we were moving to proving various infinite sets and aspects of the number line, answered a question the following way "In Math, there are many things we can prove, but at the foundations of Math we start with some assumptions and frankly you just have to take them by faith." Don't ask me the particulars because i was an Engineer taking Math Analysis simply to develop "proof" skills. As soon as I left that class, I proceeded to block out everything about Math Analysis.

22B

1) Thank you for reigniting that quarter long headache that I endured

2) I am impressed with myself for understanding that article. I guess, though I suppressed all thoughts related to that course, it is still buried in there somewhere.

I do appreciate the fun in trying to prove infinity and debating it's existence. There are people who debate the existence of "3" as well.

Speaking of infinity a few months ago Vi Hart put out a realativly new video about infinity that is fun. http://vihart.com/how-many-kinds-of-infinity-are-there/

We used LoF for most of our math last summer/fall. We started with Apples, even though the first many books were too easy. DS8 enjoyed the story, he learned some new stuff (like sets), and it eased us both into homeschooling. We made it as far as Fractions before we stopped (DS found the Bridge sections to be too stressful, so we are on hiatus.)

Regarding religion, yes, the religion is throughout all the books I've read. But I don't think it's too overdone, and it does expose DS to an aspect of our culture that he wouldn't necessarily see (we are not religious at all).

As for price, we just bit the bullet and bought them. But we've got DD7 occasionally using them too, now, so that helped justify owning them. I have seen them for sale on some of the homeschooling-swap groups, but I bet they go quickly.

We have all the books through Beginning Algebra, although we stopped using them formally after Fractions. That being said, at least once a week I see him reading one of them on his own.

I think one reason DS likes Fred is because even though Fred is brilliant, he's pretty naive. Fred makes mistakes all the time, he's constantly learning, and he's non-threatening.