Greg Linch's Commonplace Book

students typically will ask this question: what is a useful for? And if a child is asking that, then it has been introduced in the wrong way. I think it will be much more effective to begin with a bit of the history. Why did people develop this stuff? Algebra didn’t come and it wasn’t just sort of discovered hidden in a box somewhere. People invented to solve real-life problems.

—To Make Algebra Fun, Rethink The Problem : NPR