Critical Thinking Class

Today was the last day of seminars for our Renaissance Society semester. It's been an interesting experience and I'm likely to try it again in the fall depending on what sorts of subjects are being offered. I miss the young people in my class but I don't miss the pressure of papers and tests. I also miss the rigor. Some of the Renaissance presentations have not been professional.

One of the classes that was professional while also being laid back has been our Critical Thinking Class. I'll be referring back to this class in later blogs because we talked about a lot of things that I want to discuss here. This entry is more to just say thanks to the instructor Richard Kovalewski and to describe his unusual final day of instruction.

He picked for his theme today "Seeing is NOT believing" and appropriately for that theme delighted us with some examples of "magic" that he weaved into the lecture.
First there was a rope trick that has become standard fare. He handled it perfectly, making us believe that three unequal lengths of rope become equal and then unequal again.

Then he performed a couple of math demonstrations that certainly seemed amazing. He asked a random member of the class to write a 3 digit number (351) on the board that he couldn't see. Then he had them repeat that number next to it to make a 6 digit number (351351). He then announced that the number was perfectly divisible by 13. Everyone but me thought that amazing. He also predicted the resulting answer (27027) to be perfectly divisible by 11. And finally, that that answer (2457) would be divisible by 7 giving the original number (351). Of course I saw at once that writing a 3 digit number next to itself was the same as multiplying by 1,001 and that 1,001 was the product of 13 X 11 X 7. So, of course, the divisions all worked perfectly. But while my explanation would baffle most people, he launched into an explanation that was absolutely beautiful, using simple arithmetic. With that I was impressed.

He ended with a card trick that is again a staple of magicians but again well done. Unfortunately, he won't be doing this class in the fall. He'll be teaching ballroom dancing! Thanks, Richard, for a class well done.