[FOM] reply to Andre Bauer re my March 10 response to Bill Tait

[Gabriel Stolzenberg]

   In his posting of March 11, Andre Bauer wrote,

>  My current plan is to throw my students in the constructive waters
>  and watch them learn to swim. If you have a better plan on how to
>  raise students, please let me know.

Dear Andrej,

   Based on my own experiences, I think this is just the right thing
to do.  The first few times you'll surely be learning from how it goes
and modifying it accordingly.  (How not?  As they learn, you learn.)

   I have materials that may be of interest of you and, if you like,
I can also tell you about my own experiences doing what you propose
to do.  (Remembering how wonderfully it worked, I'm a little envious.)
I had the good fortune to get to work with a class of math majors, with
math = constructive math (instead of math = classical math), throughout
their undergraduate studies.

   You may also be interested in learning about some beautiful math =
constructive math, much of it published in prestigious journals, that
is indistinguishable from math = classical math unless one knows how
to read it.

   Finally, I would love to talk about computation.  I rarely have
the opportunity these days.  Aabout 15 years ago, just for practice,
I constructed a real number system in SML.  I found it fascinating,
both for what it could and could not do.  (Obviously, type checking
was inadequate.)

   With best regards,

   Gabriel Stolzenberg