COMPUTING SCIENCE
Gauss's Day of Reckoning
A famous story about the boy wonder of mathematics has taken on a life of its own
Brian Hayes
The Moral of the Tale
The story of Gauss and his conquest of the arithmetic series has a
natural appeal to young people. After all, the hero is a
child—a child who outwits a "virile brute." For many
students, that is surely an inspiration. But I worry a little that
the constant repetition of stories like this one may leave the
impression that mathematics is a game suited only to those
who go through life continually throwing off sparks of brilliance.
On first hearing this fable, most students surely want to imagine
themselves in the role of Gauss. Sooner or later, however, most of
us discover we are one of the less-distinguished classmates; if we
eventually get the right answer, it's by hard work rather than
native genius. I would hope that the story could be told in a way
that encourages those students to keep going. And perhaps it can be
balanced by other stories showing there's a place in mathematics for
more than one kind of mind.
Acknowledgments
In collecting versions of the Gauss anecdote I've been helped by
dozens of librarians as well as friends and others. I
particularly want to thank Johannes Berg of the University of
Cologne; Caroline Grey of the Johns Hopkins University
libraries; Stephan Mertens of the University of Magdeburg; Ivo
Schneider of the Bundeswehr University, Munich; Margaret Tent of
the Altamont School in Birmingham, Alabama, and Mary Linn Wernet
of the Northwestern State University libraries in Natchitoches, Louisiana.
© Brian Hayes
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