Tom Lehrer had an interesting view of Mathematics, as is seen in his alliteration of the Periodic Table



“There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,
....
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin, and sodium.
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Ha'vard,
And there may be many others but they haven't been discarvard.”



Equally interesting is his "The Derivative Song" where everyone will learn easily without knowing anything about it in fact similarly Plato an Interesting view on courage:


LYSIMACHUS, son of Aristides: "Some laugh at the very notion of advising others, and when they are asked will not say what they think. They guess at the wishes of the person who asks them, and answer according to his, and not according to their own, opinion."


Following their request for advice they were given the answer by the speaker of said advice to use their own judgment and if we are to believe Plato was a wise man we would not find it surprising he knew the table of elements and it was no coincidence the subject of their search was a warrior in Armor.

LACHES: “For my opinion is, that if the professor of this art be a coward, he will be likely to become rash, and his character will be only more notorious; or if he be brave, and fail ever so little, other men will be on the watch, and he will be greatly traduced; for there is a jealousy of such pretenders; and unless a man be preeminent in valour, he cannot help being ridiculous, if he says that he has this sort of skill.”

Spoken of course through a fortunate invention by Plato; namely Socrates

My view is that school today has more to do with learning the ropes or how much of it they'll give you, before you either hang yourself, or can hang with them; mathematics is the means by which extraordinary specialization manipulated algorithms in Nature. Yet nature is only able to create life based upon reason and balance of understanding, and as regards courage, you need to be pretty brave to attack the Industrial Academic Establishment.

More likely than not, you will lose, and take the first option they give you when you first enter into their numinous company. However as a failure in Mathematics such as myself, and no hero although there’s only one instance of me it was mostly due to having low memorization skills---and I’m getting more brazen by the day. The front of the class having better memory, follow along and are corrected many times to find their way to the correct process in the guessing game of logical numbers use based upon this same redundancy, whilst it appears the students in the back don't have the courage to stand up and sing.

To "If You Give Me Your Attention."
If you give me your attention, I will tell you what I am.
I'm a brilliant math'matician - also something of a ham.
I have tried for numerous degrees, in fact I've one of each;
Of course that makes me eminently qualified to teach.
I understand the subject matter thoroughly, it's true,
And I can't see why it isn't all as obvious to you.
Each lecture is a masterpiece, meticulously planned,
Yet everybody tells me that I'm hard to understand,
And I can't think why.

My diagrams are models of true art, you must agree,
And my handwriting is famous for its legibility.
Take a word like "minimum" (to choose a random word),
This was performed at a blackboard, and the professor wrote:
////////////////
For anyone to say he cannot read that, is absurd.
The anecdotes I tell get more amusing every year,
Though frankly, what they go to prove is sometimes less than clear,
And all my explanations are quite lucid, I am sure,
Yet everybody tells me that my lectures are obscure,
And I can't think why.

Consider, for example, just the force of gravity:
It's inversely proportional to something - let me see -
It's r^3 - no, r^2 - no, it's just r, I'll bet -
The sign in front is plus - or is it minus, I forget -
Well, anyway, there is a force, of that there is no doubt.
All these formulas are trivial if you only think them out.
Yet students tell me, "I have memorized the whole year through
Ev'rything you've told us, but the problems I can't do."
And I can't think why!







Plato excerpt from Laches, or Courage
By Plato
Written 380 B.C.E


Tom Lehrer Excerpt from Tom Lehrer - The Professor's Song lyrics