Regarding my earlier post "The Old Barometer Story (was Tower height
joke)" [Hake (2007)] there is an:
A. ERRATUM: The signature quote was:
"Parents' organizations such as, "Mathematically Correct," "New York
City Honest and Open Logical Debate," and "Where's the Math?" among
dozens of others, continue to resist the imposition of "fuzzy math"
in their schools.
David Klein (2007) in (would by believe?) the American Journal
of Physics"
Of course, the "by" in "would by believe" should be replaced by "you"
so at to read "would you believe." But it's not my fault! My lousy
spiel cheekier failed me again!:
I have a spelling checker,
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Jerrold H. Zar (1994)
B. ADDENDUM
Phys-L's John Hubisz kindly sent me a copy of Alexander Callandra's
"The Barometer Story" as it appeared in Project Physics Reader. Here
is the last paragraph of that version:
(1) PROJECT PHYSICS READER's "The Barometer Story":
"At this point, I asked the student if he really didn't know the
answer to the problem. He admitted that he did, but that he was so
fed up with college instructors trying to teach him how to think and
to use critical thinking, instead of showing him the structure of the
subject matter, that he decided to take off on what he regarded
mostly as a sham."
Contrast the above with the last paragraph of the Saturday Review's
version of what is purported to be Callandra's "Angels on a Pin: A
Modern Parable"
(2) SATURDAY REVIEW's "Angels on a Pin: A Modern Parable"
"At this point I asked the student if he really did know the
conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, said
that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to
teach him how to think, using the "scientific method," and to explore
the deep inner logic of the subject in a pedantic way, as is often
done in the new mathematics, rather than teaching him the structure
of the subject. With this in mind, he decided to revive scholasticism
as an academic lark to challenge the Sputnik-panicked classrooms of
America."
From the above comparison, I think it's very likely that 'Ronald
Standler is correct in his note appended to
<http://www.rbs0.com/baromete.htm>:
"The last paragraph of the story quoted. . . .[from the Saturday
Review's version of what's purported to be Callandra's OBS story
"Angels on a Pin: A Modern Parable"]. . . above seems jarringly
inconsistent with the remainder of the story. In particular, the
mentions of "the new mathematics", "scholasticism", and "the
Sputnik-panicked classrooms of America" are irrelevant to both the
subject and the lesson of the story. During an exchange of e-mails
with Prof. Richard Hake during August 2000 about the origin of the
barometer story, I noticed that this discordant last paragraph does
*not* appear in a 1964 version of Calandra's story, and also does
*not* appear in the version in Calandra's 1961 book "The Teaching of
Elementary Science and Mathematics," which suggests to me that the
last paragraph was added by an editor at "Saturday Review" in 1968. "
Furthermore, I think it's probably also the case that the Saturday
Review's provocative TITLE "Angels on a Pin: A Modern Parable" was
the work of a confused editor. God save us from editors!
EDITOR: A person employed on a newspaper. . . [or journal]. . . ,
whose business it is to
separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see to it that the
chaff is printed -
Elbert Hubbard <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbert_Hubbard>
(I have not discovered the printed source. Does anyone know it?)
Klein, D. 2007. "School math books, nonsense, and the National
Science Foundation," Am. J. Phys. 75(2): 101-102; online at
<http://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/nsf.html>.