Ewonce 1!

Quarter 1 Paper

Caitlin Ewonce

Ms. Swick

Pre-Calc/Trigonometry

October 22, 2018

 Ewonce 2!

According to merriam-webster.com, grit is “firmness of mind or spirit : unyielding

courage in the face of hardship or danger”. A fixed mindset is when one believes that their

intelligence and abilities are unchanging, stable traits. When it comes to success, they believe

that it is not about effort, but about raw ability. People who are in a fixed mindset are able to

accept the state of being stuck only insofar as they accept the state of being visibly and

irrefutably stupid, meaning they are not going to end up far. A growth mindset is the opposite of

what a fixed mindset is. This means that they believe that effort fuels progress and that the harder

you work, the more you’ll learn. It is said that perseverance is the key to mathematical progress.

Other people have viewed mathematics in a different way through conceptual lenses. Going back

to grit and tying it up with perseverance is that when people experience “grit” perseverance

becomes partly a matter of personality, of exhibiting the right characteristics: tenacity, tough,

grit-less kids bail, whereas gritty kids keep working-and thus prosper. Ben Orlin says that, “you

can be a nimble mathematician, a model of grit, and a fervent believer in the human potential for

growth-but still, getting stuck on a math problem may leave you deflated and disheartened”.

Orlin is saying that when people struggle on a math problem they tend to give up and end up

being very hard on themselves that they should look towards perseverance and continue to try

their best. Orlin says that we should quiet our fears and cope with the doubt we feel when we are

struggling with math. Orlin wants us to know that everyone has failed at some point in their life

and that it is okay if we do. We need perseverance when it comes to a situation when we are

dealing with a difficult problem. We should work even harder when we do not understand a

problem. We should not give up and get frustrated, if anything, we should take a deep breath and
 Ewonce 3!

try even harder to become successful. People should not give up because their hard work will

pay off and they should always stick to what they are doing no matter how hard things may be.

“Accepting the state of being stuck” means to me that everyone will struggle and get

stuck on a math problem. People need to accept the idea that they may struggle sometimes

because we are human. Humans are not perfect and do not always have to understand every

single math problem that there is out there, so we should learn to accept that it is okay if we

struggle with a problem or math in general. Personally I do not feel like I am perseverant when it

comes to difficulty on a math problem. Math is not my best subject so I typically give up on

difficult problems easily. I am currently working on that weakness of mine by trying to be more

pevservenat when being in math class and when it comes to working on difficult problems in

class! You need to have a growth mindset because when you have a growth mindset you view

failure as a way to grow. By having a growth mindset you learn from your mistakes and from

there you work harder so you no longer make those mistakes.

Pierre de Fermat was a French mathematician that was born in the early 1600s. His

theorem states that no three positive integers (a,b,c) satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any

integer of n greater than 2. This theorem came about when Fermat put a copy of the theorem in a

copy of the Arithmetica. This theory remained unproven till about the 20th century. Andrew

Wiles is a British mathematician who studied at the University of Oxford and specializes in the

number theory, which is Fermat’s last theorem. Wiles was born on April 11, 1953 and he has also

had a fascination with the last theorem since he was 10 years-old! It took him many years to

figure out a way to solve how this theorem works. According to britannica.com, “his solution

involves elliptic curves and modular forms and builds on the work of Gerhard Frey, Barry
 Ewonce 4!

Mazur, Kenneth Ribet, Karl Rubin, Jean-Pierre Serre, and many others”. He presented his

solution of the “Shimura-Taniyama-Weil” conjecture, which proved how to solve for Fermat’s

last theorem.
 Ewonce 5!

Bibliography

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Fermat's Last Theorem.” Encyclopædia Britannica,

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 9 Mar. 2017, www.britannica.com/science/Fermats-last-

theorem#ref23370.

“Fermat's Last Theorem.” From Wolfram MathWorld, mathworld.wolfram.com/

FermatsLastTheorem.html.