Arguably the fact that it's an open question is what makes it special. But while Beal more or less came up with the question in a vacuum, it's related to other questions posed over the years. Some more details can be found here: http://www.ams.org/notices/199711/beal.pdf

He apparently does mathematics in his spare time and has spent a good amount of time working on this question (that's why it's named after him). The prize has been offered for several years actually, the news is that it has increased to $1M. The origin of the prize, along with some more details, here: http://www.ams.org/notices/199711/beal.pdf

Sounds to me like a plug for his startup: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-30/googles-eric-schmidt-invests-in-obamas-big-data-brains .

Yes. I didn't make the law, nor do I follow it in my brewing, but that's what the law says. Keep in mind it was written 400 years ago when water chemistry was not understood at all.

RO water is unsuitable for brewing as it lacks necessary ions (e.g. calcium for yeast health) and will result in an improper mash pH usually. It's not uncommon for (non-German) brewers to "build" their water by starting with RO and adding ions back. But this is not permissible under the Reinheistegbot, at best they could dilute their water with RO or DI, which dilutes any pollutants but does not remove them.

It sounds like he thinks his audience needs but does not want the training wheels (probably because they don't think they need them).

I tend to agree with you. But as a faculty member, I don't get any say in what goes on in K-12, or which students are admitted to college. All I get a say in is what to do with the students that do show up on campus. And this kind of program seems like something faculty members can do to better educate those students we do get.

I do agree, we need to bring the K-12 standards up, but that's a political game that has to be solved in a way approved by the teachers' unions and the state legislatures. At least at universities, we are more (but not completely) immune to the whims of politicians.

Teaching students how to do proofs teaches them an abstract way of thinking that is universally applicable to solving open ended problems--problems of the form "Here's point A. Point B is over there. How do we get there?". Not every engineer needs this kind of thinking, but some do, and the best will benefit from it. Some of the greatest engineering feats came from attacking these sorts of problems: "Here we are on Earth. There's the moon. Go put a man on it."

If you just want to write iPhone apps, you can probably skip the good math classes, but if you want to really learn how to think, take as much as you can. Saying an engineer won't need these kinds of thinking skills because you don't have a specific application in mind for them is the same short-sighted thinking as saying we shouldn't fund basic research if we don't have a clear application in mind before the research is done.

Nobody is arguing that we shouldn't try and prepare everyone well before they get to college, but the simple fact is that we (at the universities) get these underprepared students every year, and that is unlikely to change soon. Rather than just throw blame at others and tell them to fix it, this is a proactive approach: what can *we* (at the universities) do about this problem? We'll all be ecstatic when K-12 education improves to make this a moot point, but until then we shouldn't just ignore the problem.

Funny, my math department has to offer dumbed down (i.e. remove most proofs) courses for the engineers, e.g. Matrix Analysis instead of Linear Algebra. Our engineers don't hardly have to know what a proof is.

Sounds like a good idea to me. I work at a large flagship state school, and we see a number of underprepared students admitted. The problem is not so much that we can't teach them what they need to catch up, it's that they are given unrealistic expectations. The College of Arts and Sciences is making a big push to have everyone finish in 4 years, but this is very unrealistic for these underprepared students. A program where everyone expects them to take an extra year would reset the expectations to a realistic level and, in my opinion, probably improve performance.

By the way, "underprepared" often includes students who have, for example, passed pre-calculus, but did not learn the material and thus struggle when I see them in calculus. It's well established that the best predictor of success in calculus is algebra/pre-calculus skills, so giving them a chance to sharpen these skills with less time pressure would be beneficial to the student.

Probably (no pun intended) because one really needs (some) calculus to understand things like continuous probability distributions and the Central Limit Theorem.

Professors don't reject technology in general. They reject any particular classroom approach that doesn't fit their needs, whether it is technological or not. The latest fad is Blackboard and other course management systems. They are largely a complete waste of time. It is easier for me to use my rudimentary HTML skills to hack up a webpage with links to syllabi, assignments, etc.

The one technology I am learning to like is the clickers. One doesn't learn mathematics by watching the professor, one learns it by doing mathematics. The clickers allow me to force my large lecture to work problems in class. It is also helpful in diagnosing their issues when they are too shy/reluctant/embarrassed to ask questions. Automated homework (e.g. WebAssign) is okay; it's kind of lousy for the students, but easy for me to assign/grade.

As far as comments above about lazy professors just wanting to research and not wanting to teach, our priorities are set by the administration. They will tell us that we are evaluated 50% teaching/50% research, but they are not being honest (with us or themselves). Essentially, if you can speak English and aren't just naturally terrible at teaching, you are better served (from a tenure/promotion perspective) minimizing time spent on teaching so you can maximize the time spent on research. When students demand more focus on teaching, administration will adjust their priorities, but it's hardly the professors who set the rules of the game.

Yes, IAAP (of mathematics) at a large research university.

On the contrary, I see no reason whatsoever to assume you and your friends are somehow a representative sample of the population as a whole. Think about your parents, and their friends, for example. Or your grandparents, etc.

The university where I work does not allow the departments to supply coffee. However, they have a program where you buy a reusable cup, and any dining location (even Starbucks) on campus fills it for $0.55 . By my nearest calculation, that's about how much it's costing me to buy decent coffee beans and brew at home. So while I still bring a cup from home in the morning, the cheap coffee has me heading out for another cup in the afternoon, thus doubling my daily coffee consumption. If the department instead provided coffee, it would most likely be of sufficiently poor quality that I would pass on it anyways. So I almost feel that having not-free coffee is causing me to drink more. As an added benefit, it also gets me out of the office for a short walk every afternoon.