Will give it a try (although I am not very optimistic). https://twitter.com/RandyJMcCarthy/status/1033072945130889217 …
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Replying to @j_bertolotti
You have to wait long enough until the silence makes people uncomfortable enough to answer. If you ask for questions and don't wait through that painful silence, it often doesn't work.
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Replying to @EdwardQuine @johncarlosbaez
I already do that (usually twice a lecture). I can not report great successes though.
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Replying to @j_bertolotti @EdwardQuine
I don't know, but I suspect that if you don't wait for them to say something, the students will decide it's easiest to stay silent and wait for you to move on - *especially* after they've seen that this strategy is successful.
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Most student hesitation is due to fear of embarrassment, which in turn derives from fear of being wrong. I find it helps greatly to stress that even the greatest masters have repeatedly made hilarious public errors -- that indeed this is inseparable from the attainment of mastery
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @johncarlosbaez and
I find it helps to give striking examples, like Euler's assertion (in writing!) that 3 and 7 are each the sum of a square number and five times a square number -- statements so obviously false that a third-grader can easily disprove them.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @johncarlosbaez and
The moral lesson is that errors take care of themselves, if you just keep thinking and experimenting. The only deadly sin is giving up; all others you atone for simply by continuing to strive for truth and understanding. It is therefore more important to be curious than right.
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Indeed, I wish more people knew that truly great mathematicians have always understood (and sometimes even acknowledged in writing) that being right, though important, is in fact a relatively minor achievement. What is really difficult is not to be right, but to be interesting.
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