The Eighth Tribe, 1979 (6. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1979-06-01 / 6. szám
Page 8 THE EIGHTH TRIBE June, 1979 Academic News — DR. GEORGE POLYA In life, says George Polya who has lived 90 years of it, “everything is just a guess, concerning your job, your home, your family, even the laws of physics.” And you can make better guesses if you know some mathematics, says Dr. Polya, who is teaching math again at Stanford University. “By knowing the essence of math, you learn to look at things closely, and not to accept them too easily. Math provides a school in judgment. It can improve your critical judgment.” Internationally known, he is the author of some 250 papers, some dealing with research in probability, number theory, and combinatorics, and of “How To Solve It,” a book giving advice to students that has sold 2500,000 copies in 15 languages. Polya started teaching math 60 years ago. Among other places, he taught for 26 years at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and 11 at Stanford, California, until his retirement in 1953 at age 65. When Sputnik put new emphasis on science and math, Polya began teaching high school teachers how to teach math. Now he’s back at Stanford, California, filling in for a colleague, teaching an introductory course to combinatorics in the computer science department. Born in Hungary, Dr. Polya came to America in 1940 and became a U.S. citizen. “Schools should teach math better. It tends to be the least popular subject. Math teachers should arouse the kids and make them like math. Give them problems that hold natural interest for them, something to do with baseball, for example. If they learn the essence of math, their decisions would be more rational. What is the scientific method except Guess And Test?” Polya became a mathematician somewhat by default after early interests in literature, biology, physics, law, and philosophy — “my way of study was to zig and zag.” He had three math teachers along the way, “one very good, the other two bad, in different ways.” Finally he decided “I was not good enough for physics, and too good for philosophy, so math was in between.” He received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1912, after earlier qualifying to teach Hungarian and Latin and starting to acquire speaking knowledge of four languages. Modern miniaturized calculators “can be good. But they are bad if you don’t learn your math tables and have to rely on them. The machine itself can’t make a mistake, but you can. If you know some math, you can know that some answers just can’t be right. If you don't know simple math, they can be dangerous. For kids, they are educational if you use them the right way.” He was given a calculator on his 90th birthday last Dec. 13, “but I don’t use it. I use the slide rule I got in Gottingen (Germany) 70 years ago.” Retirement at 65, he says, “is good for the young; otherwise they don’t have jobs. But we need to have busy bands all our lives.” Dr. Polya often walks nearly two miles to the Stanford campus, and strangers frequently offer him rides. “They ask what do I do. 1 reply, T teach mathematics.’ They say, ‘Ah,’ and the conversation ends.” — Give a Gift Subscription to your Children and Grandchildren --
