1 min readNov 5, 2017
- You’re doing that thing where “both sides are wrong,” and we’ve already seen how terrible that turns out.
- (And 3.) I’ll try to work in a way that makes sense. Underneath the axioms we consider mathematical is a framework of a billion made-up rules. The concept of numbers is made-up, and so are the words we’ve created for them. We made them up in order to make our lives easier to organize because humans are generally not that organized. We made a few compromises, but settled on some common beliefs so we can tackle harder issues. Ultimately, Gutierrez is saying that these assumptions, compromises, and justifications are all made in objective spaces, and even the things we consider neutral on their face come with varying biases based on a given community. Check this for instance. Even when we make direct translations, we still see a difference in peoples’ capacity to remember a sequence of numbers.
- Every subject area has elements of agreed upon beliefs, and then those are tenuous at best. In math, it’s not just a matter of learning the rules of the work, but also the conditions in which students learn the rules. Gutierrez’ work suggests that we ought to pay attention the biases we lay at the feet of our students even as we believe we’re going through the work in an objective manner.
