Paul Lockhart

For seven years, Paul Lockhart's A Mathematician's Lament enjoyed a samizdat-style popularity in the mathematics underground, before demand prompted its 2009 publication to even wider applause and debate. An impassioned critique of K-12 mathematics education, it outlined how we shortchange students by introducing them …

Paul Lockhart reveals arithmetic not as the rote manipulation of numbers but as a set of ideas that exhibit the surprising behaviors usually reserved for higher branches of mathematics. In this entertaining survey, he explores the nature of counting and different number systems—Western and non-Western—and weighs the …

“One of the best critiques of current mathematics education I have ever seen.”—Keith Devlin, math columnist on NPR’s Morning EditionA brilliant research mathematician who has devoted his career to teaching kids reveals math to be creative and beautiful and rejects standard anxiety-producing teaching methods. Witty and …