Cambridge Mathematics

Abstract

PROF. GREENHILL'S notice (p. 338) of the German translation of my “Calculus” is pleasant enough reading. He says I follow the method of Squeers, “Spell winder! Now go and clean it.” He is nearly right, but in truth I act on the belief that the average English boy loves to learn by doing things first and thinking about them afterwards, and so my method is rather the reverse of that of Squeers. Again, “the book, as a series of events connected by a slight thread of continuous theory, suggests a mathematical Pickwick.” This is acute and severe and good humoured and kindly. I hope that Cambridge men, as they believe in Prof. Greenhill's great knowledge and good sense, will also see his kindly feeling, and that they will not think me presumptuous in urging them to consider his advice seriously. It will be gathered that I do not myself think that my course of mathematics for engineers is more than a promising effort. I am very much alive to its defects. But I know that the idea oil Which I have been working is a good one; I carefully developed that idea in opening the discussion at the Glasgow British Association meeting (published by Messrs. Macmillan). It is an idea as well known as the commonest copybook maxim, but it is as much ignored at our colleges and schools as the sixth and eighth Commandments were in Blackbeard's ship. Anyone who studies how Prof. Forsyth has transformed my copy-book-maxim-ideas of elementary mathematics teaching so that they have become acceptable to all the schoolmasters of the country, and have in a few months been adopted by many examining bodies, must see that it is useless for anybody outside Cambridge to do more than say more and more strongly and persistently how much Cambridge is ignoring certain obvious truths; how Cambridge is neglecting its duty of leadership of this country in mathematics teaching.