Mathematicians can have a childlike sense of wonder. They chart the optimal color of bananas to ripen on schedule, rather than just purchasing the best-looking ones. Where most people see a mess to clean up, they see the partial differential equations written in the red of splattered ketchup. They set up statistical models to predict the right time to commute, instead of trusting Google Maps.
Though it may seem strange, especially to students, this way of viewing reality is common to those who have an organized language with which to interpret the world. Just as a mathematician sees fractals in a snowflake, so a civil engineer sees stress contours in the Brooklyn Bridge and a musician sees the notes of Bach’s “Fugue in G Minor.” Their knowledge of the language of their profession gives them an intuition about how the universe unfolds.
The question, as David Bessis reminds us in his book, Mathematica, is how to instill this way…
