"The Being", Part 15

Within this chapter we will go into some of the tactics I used to teach while at middle school.
As I have mentioned, besides testing, I guided with wisdom, but I also taught as well. One of the ways I taught was, by simply egging on others to do something...whatever 'it' was, I wanted them to learn, while positing some ideas in their head...just enough, to get their minds lit up, and enough slack to allow them to go with it, and take and embrace the teaching, as oppose to simply handing them everything all at once, straight from me.
This way, there was always a two way engaging with the ones I wanted to teach, it was active role playing...teacher to pupil.
Well while I will not get into too many of these moments, I will example for you a very pertinent one, one that did revolutionize mathematics and all its possibilities regarding calculations. As it were, one day out in the playground at the basketball courts, it was rather a slow day, one not too busy, where the body of students and staff was at a minimum. I was standing at a basketball court, at the freethrow line, and I was simply trying to make shots into the basket. Well, most assuredly I made some while some I missed, but due to the intense concentration on my face, one of the kids asked me what are you so intense about? I said, well what do you think the odds of making this shot is? I had simply answered him with another question...He said, to the effect, he did not know, so I told him what certain factors might possibly weigh in, in making this shot...wind factor, my direct position/footing, the arc and angle of the shot thrown from my hand when released, the spin of the ball when launched, the thrust of the ball from the propulsion from my wrists, etc. etc. That is when he piped up and said, those are odds! NO ONE CAN CALCULATE ODDS! I said, really...why so? and continued to engage him while another kid soon had come upto us both now, but this one was actually a cup half full kind of fellow, and engaged the notion of calculating odds/chance and being right. Thus, with his posits as to mph of wind factor, my direct footing, etc., we started taking shots at the basket.
Well this was in the 80's, and that is when the mathematics of calculating odds/chance was actually born, on the playground basketball courts of my middle school, one sunny day afternoon, with two other kids, the third being me, who spurned them on to something they had never seen before, but is now recognized as being part of mathematics.
But, O how it was criticized by the mathematicians of its day, before it was finally accepted!!!


P.S. While actually fluent in mathematics, I really do disdain math altogether, a personal choice of mine, an odd dichotomy as well, that still persists to the present day.