Purple prose

I've not laughed so hard in a long, long time as I did this afternoon at some of the passages the 365 folks came up with for incoherent instructions for the multiplication of two 2x2 matrices. I'm going to have to try to get permission from some of them to anonymously post their work. It's simply classic.

After a brief discussion of the criteria by which written work will be evaluated in the course, we went through with the "Write a Bad Paper" exercise, to which people took with gusto. It was quite clear from the get-go that clear and consistent terminology and notation play a major role in understandable mathematical writing, as their absence signaled without exception dense and opaque technical prose. Irene was happy enough to share her subteam's creation with the rest of the class: a nice long string of "multiply the first first element by the other first first element and add this to the product of the first second element by the second second element..." earned a round of applause. Niobe struggled to read through the work Hugo and Bethesda had created, in which, among other faults, the 'n' in "and" bore a tilde.

The students also had the opportunity to provide feedback to one another on their work, taking care to remain respect, helpful, and relevant.

I had a peek at a few of the rough drafts for project proposals, too: it seems there's a fairly high level of excitement about these. I'm very much looking forward to reading both the proposals and the students' journal entries, which I'll get my hands on on Monday.

During the last few days, I've also had a chance to talk to a number of the students individually. I've met some of those I didn't know before this course, I've learned more about those I did know, and I've found that all of the groups (with a few minor bumps and gurgles) appear to be working admirably well together. There were a few kinks to work out in one group in which communication had not been so grand, but things seemed to be running much more smoothly today than they had on Monday.

Another issue: a couple of students have expressed concern that every other member of their respective teams seems a bit quicker than they are. One of these students suggested having a team that convened only for the purpose of in-class exercises, one that would be made up of those more reflective souls who might not pick things up so quickly and would prefer the setting of a slower pace. As I indicated to this student, my only problem with this proposition would be that such a team would likely slide even further behind the others on in-class activities. I also assured this person that all individuals' contributions would become evident and invaluable as research gets underway: the more reflective, prone-to-pondering people are often liable to catch things the blitzing brainstormers overlook. I recall my first year of graduate school at Vanderbilt: there were four of us in that brutal Moore-method topology course, and though two of us came with considerably stronger backgrounds, our surety more than once turned into cocksureness and we glossed over important yet subtle details which one of the two "slower" students would catch, having to think each step through carefully and critically.

It'll all come out in the wash, you'll see!