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Sometimes Gardner Was a Sourpuss, Too

Burkard Polster and Marty Ross of "Math Masters" explore a lesser-known critical side of Martin Gardner.

The pair begins:

'Why can't you be more like Martin Gardner?' So has been the refrain from some of your Maths Masters' disgruntled readers. Well, the answer is pretty simple: we're not as smart as Martin Gardner, we can't write nearly as well as him and our limited talents haven't been honed by fifty years of practice. The request is as wildly optimistic as our wives' plea that we be more like George Clooney.

They proceed to argue that Gardner could be "as grumpy as the best of them" and even, at times, turned his critical eye to mathematics education (a topic Polster and Ross rail about regularly).

Read the column.

Start Date: 
Monday, November 3, 2014