Boris Pritsker - Geometrical Kaleidoscope

I cant do it anymore! My oldest son Alex put aside his geometry homework. And please dont tell me I would ever use this nightmare somewhere, somehow in my life! My heroic attempts to explain to him the solution of the problem involving the properties of the bisector of a triangle failed miserably. You should be ashamed of yourself. I recently published an article about the properties of the bisector (see ) and you dont have the patience even to listen to me. I made this final argument trying to get him to pay attention to the subject. All of a sudden there was a spark in his eyes and he looked at me with definite expression of interest on his face.

May I see it?

Sure, here it is. I was very proud of myself.

He looked at the article, read a few paragraphs, and then patiently let me finish the explanation of the solution to his homework problem.

Could you please make a copy of this article for me? he asked when we finished working on the homework. It was a real pleasure to hear something like this from him. Obviously the kid wanted to show the copy to his friends at school and gain some popularity because of his fathers math skills.

In a few days he got back from school and told me about getting an A on his most recent geometry test. My efforts had finally paid off, and I was very happy for a few days. Then I met his school friend. He told me the true story about how the A was earned.

Alex is a very good tennis player. His interests have always been in sports and he has never been a great math student. He has compensated for his lack of knowledge and desire to learn the subject by making jokes and telling funny stories during the classes. Teachers always had a tough time trying to keep him quiet. By the way, he never mentioned in a classroom that his dad used to be a professional mathematician.

That day he was more annoying to the teacher than usual. At the end of the session Alex announced that he did not have to do the assigned homework, because he had just studied those properties with his dad, while reading his published article in a math magazine. It was obviously hard to imagine that he was telling the truth.

I am sick and tired of your fantasies. Ill teach you a lesson this time. If you bring that article into class tomorrow, youll get an A on the next test without even taking it. But if you dont have it, your homework assignment will be tripled and you will need to hand in every single problem to me, the teacher said.

The teachers desire to make fun of this annoying kid was quite understandable.

You know the end of the story. The teacher kept his word.

That was my sons only experience of using geometry in real life so far. I have to admit, that even though he did not succeed in geometry class, he did apply the methods I was teaching him.