Luke has taken to not drinking milk. He had a few sips of his sister's chocolate milk and then decided not to drink regular milk. He then decided that all sippee cups are bad, and so he won't drink it from a sippee cup unless he's really thirsty. But he loves the word “cocoa,” which he learned from “Snowmen at Night” (“sipping cups of ice cold cocoa made by snowman mothers.”). So I pour his cold chocolate milk into a mug with a straw, and he drinks it right up. He doesn't like anything to be warmer than room temperature, so I don't heat it up at all. He says “cocoa” over and over again while drinking his chocolate milk. It's all a matter of presentation.
Why you should study the history of math In the mid 1300s a fad made its way around Italy. Mathematicians would challenge each other to “mathematical duels”. They would post problems for their opponents to solve, sometimes along with their solutions in coded poetry. The winners would get support and funding from rich patrons, the losers would descend into obscurity. One such contest, between Fiore and Tartaglia, involved a new method for solving the cubic. In order to win, Tartaglia worked day and night to find Fiore’s method---unfortunately, Fiore did not do the same and only knew his own method and no others. (*Recall that the formula for solutions to quadratic equations of the form use the quadratic formula, Giorlamo Cardano---physician, philosopher, astrologer and mathematician---convinced Tartaglia to share his method and promised never to reveal it. Then Cardano figured out a more general method, and wanted to share it, but was blocked by his promises. Fortunately (for Ca...
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