Things to watch out for
“Neither you nor I nor anybody else knows what makes a mathematician tick. It is not a question of cleverness.”
In his “Prelude to Mathematics,” noted mathematician and pedagogue W. W. Sawyer recalls a striking exchange he once had with a very little girl.
“I like the word 'September,'” she told him. “It goes 'sEptEmbEr.'”
Sawyer was profoundly impressed.
“I had never myself noticed this pattern .*..*..*. in the vowels and consonants of 'September,'” Sawyer confessed. ”It is of course completely symmetrical.”
Although there is nothing straightforward about detecting mathematical talent in children, this sort of keen responsiveness to the beauty of abstract patterns is probably as clear a sign of the trait as any — and, as this example shows, it can manifest itself very early indeed.
We see a lot of this sort of thing here at the Stanford Math Circle, and it never ceases to delight and surprise us. So if you know of a student whose grades may be less than stellar, but who obsesses over things like the symmetry of "September," then we hope you’ll recommend her to visit us. We're always especially eager to meet kids like that. (Oh, and best of all, please come along with her yourself. We love to have teachers join us here.)
The shape of things to come
Very soon, we’ll be adding to this website a wide variety of resources for teachers. Please check back with us again shortly.