環保數學?

環保數學不是我原創的,記得曾在多年前的比賽時已有中學生提出在數學科中加環境保護相關的項目/教材,如在教正比例時計一下當香港成為曾蔭權心目中的一千萬人口大都會時每天排出的污水有多少,每天生產了多少二氧化碳,環保設施又要增加幾多,因此庫房額外多支出多少等等,我以為可以再進一步,因為據認知心理學的研究,人類似乎是天生難於理解指數式增進,所以與其還是背誦計算機可應付得焯焊有餘的９*９乘數表,不如背９^９的指數表來補償人類天生的認知缺陷, 斧底抽薪地學習環保意識。因為此指數表的數位太大,所以建議小學時只背到所有結果為５位數範圍以內的指數,而中學畢業前要完成９位以內所有的指數。

My idea on environmental friendly Mathematics

That is actually nothing new, using examples from environmental issue like pollution, growth of population, depletion of Ozone in Mathematics textbook is already an adopted idea. My thought is related to a more fundamental change in the syllabus of Mathematics: It was suggested human mind has difficulty to contemplate exponential growth, which maybe a root cause for the lack of awareness of the issue of population explosion. So my suggestion is instead of memorize the multiplication table of from 1*1 to 10*10, student should learn to memorize the index table from 1^1 to 10^10 (For all the result within 5 digits in Primary School, and 10 digits when graduate from Secondary School). In this way, student would built a sense of how growth of population affect the Earth from Primary school; moreover, what we master when we memorize the multiplication table is essentially doing the arithmetic operation of addition in our head, but not doing multiplication . Who can push it to the syllabus around the world?