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Noel Paul Stookey's avatar

...and there's nothing like the world of music to demonstrate how a 'mistake' is often the beginning of something truly original!

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Emily H's avatar

This is good stuff. I am going to find this book.... I am a retired professor of undergraduate mathematics and the Most Helpful thing I could do for my students was to show them how I tackled a problem. The slickly presented finished examples usually daunted the young thinkers and taught most of them almost nothing. But watching me break things down and sometimes bumble around got them thinking and trying. The reason I knew to do this is that decades earlier, I had learned more from watching my music teacher figure out how to play a difficult passage than I ever learned from watching the polished performances. I figured the value would carry over to mathematics.

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