Please Lie Less Carefully « Vlorbik on Math Ed

Please Lie Less Carefully

January 18, 2008 in Blogs

Wednesday’s “Seeing the World Like a Corporation”, by Tom Hoffman of Tuttle SVC articulately (and, for my money, rightly) accused Dan Meyer of selling sizzle, not steak. Of course Meyer immediately denied it. Hoffman’s response followed yesterday. From now on, you’re on your own.

I’ve argued with Meyer before, in these comment threads for example. Probably I’m done; we just inhabit different universes and I might as well get used to it. As for “working hard to make it look easy”–if it ain’t easy and you make it look easy, that’s called lying, and I’m against it.

3 Replies

e

January 19, 2008 at 1:35 am

I’m surprised you haven’t gotten a comment from Dan yet :)

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Denise

January 21, 2008 at 3:14 pm

Minor quibble: “If is ain’t easy, and you make it look easy, that’s called lying…” Not necessarily. Sometimes it’s simply good editing, along the lines of the Blaise Pascal quote: “If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter.”

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jd2718

January 22, 2008 at 5:53 am

I find Dan’s work interesting, and I comment from time to time. I wouldn’t have framed this as Tom Hoffman did, but Dan writes about presentation and packaging, and I wonder about the math. He writes about his class less as students and more as a test audience.

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