美国数学建模竞赛特等奖论文——s Editorial The Good Fight【数学建模】.pdfVIP

PublishersEditorial 185 Publishers Editorial The Good Fight Solomon A. Garfunkel Executive Director COMAP, Inc. 57 Bedford St., Suite 210 Lexington, MA 02420 s.garfunkelDrmail. comap. com The MCM issue of The UMAPJournal has historically been an opportunity for me to reflect on the year at COMAP and discuss with you many of the new projects underway. I am, with your indulgence, going to diverge from that tradition this year. Perhaps it is the coming (as I write this) election, but this has been an extremely political year. And that politics is having its effect on all of us involved in mathematics education. I have found myself as a consequence writing pieces that are more polemical in nature-defending our beliefs and our work within our community and without. So, with no apologies, here are two short essays that reflect my thoughts on the good fight. Mathematical Breadth for All The discussion (debate, war) about differentiating the curriculum for stu- dents with the perceived ability to go on in mathematics vs. the rest usually misses the crucial point of breadth. It is in many ways ironic that the mathe- matics for all movement has succeeded in infusing the secondary school math- ematics curriculum with many important ideas and concepts that the better students simply do not see. A great deal of effort has gone into the creation of materials intended to show all students the usefulness of mathematics, through the use of contemporary applications and the processes of mathematical mod- eling. In many cases, this means teaching more discrete mathematics such as graph theory, game.theory, social choice theory, and operations research. Henry Pollak is fond of saying that there are four reasons