Member-only story
This Just In: Resurrecting Imagination
If creativity is just connecting things, why is it so difficult?
I took an optional summer geometry class in high school. My friends and I enrolled in the accelerated 6-week course to qualify for Algebra II during the school year. Yes, we were nerds, and yes, I’m okay admitting it.
On the surface, geometry is all shapes and angles. Yet, underneath the polygons and isosceles triangles are complex mathematical proofs.
One afternoon, the teacher put us in groups and provided a complex equation. She tasked us with solving the equation using tested proofs or theorems found in our textbook.
We were stuck. We could solve the equation but proving the answer escaped us. A friend in the group took a break and went to the bathroom. When he came back, he proclaimed, “I’ve got it!”
He started writing an entirely new mathematical theorem developed in the bathroom. Within a few minutes, he proved the equation. My friend dubbed the Bathroom-Triangle Theorem of Mathematics. We presented the work to the teacher and she promptly told us we were wrong. Using an untested and unpublished theorem was against the rules.
I argued with the teacher, explaining all theorems are untested when first developed. They are all theories…
