An unforgetable visit in math tower in OSU

by Brilliant Huo


Yesterday(July 16th),I had an unforgetable conversation with Daniel B. Shapiro, a professor of math in the OSU. And I had no idea about what the math education of undergraduates or what the math professor is like in the USA before. I met professor Daniel at room 124 in math tower at about 1:30PM and the chat lasts about an hour. During the chat, I noticed that professor Daniel is the derector of a Summer Math Program for some high school students from all over the world. He thought that the students who is good at math should be pushed more and taken more consideration by teachers. But I think that these special push on good students may be cause a heavy pressure on them and some of them may be bored with math because of that. We do also had a discussion about some fundamental math issues. I showed him an easy way to prove that the number "e" is not a rational number. And he told me the ancient Chinese acheivement which shoud be taught on undergraduates' abstract algebra classes. Of course our chat was not only focus on math education and math issues. We also talked about the Chinese culture. He actually have some Chinese tea cups. And the covers of the cups is printed with Chinese words "万寿无疆". And I told him that '"万寿" means living a long life, and ''无疆'' means no boundary. So as a whole, the chinese words means wishing you have an infinity long life. Although an hour time is never enough for some more profound issues I cared about, the visit and talk I had in math tower yesterday would certainly be an unforgetable experience I had in OSU and in USA.