A Kaleberg
Aug 8, 2017 · 1 min read

This is an excellent insight. Narrative is basic to human learning, and proofs are a form of narrative, but their goal is to explain the characters, different types of numbers, geometrical entities, operators and so on. Real analysis is about how numbers get very close to each other in certain ways without actually meeting, so the stories involve numbers getting closer together, how close they can get, how their various friends and relatives, functions and relations, behave as they draw closer. Look at that (f(b)-f(a)) / (b-a) stuff in the illustrations. It is about a and b getting closer together.

The problem is that learning about character from narrative requires learning to think in certain ways. Mathematicians can offer all sorts of stories in which the characters behave consistently, like the characters in Zola’s Experimental Novel, but people tend to take things at face value. If a character in a story is presented as the good guy, most people will assume he is a good guy even if he does horrible things and is toxic to those around him. The first unreliable narrator usually comes as a shock in high school.

Having done some tutoring in mathematics, I recognize that one has to exploit narrative, but it takes some doing to get people to look past the surfaces and actually try to understand the players.