John and I have been thinking a lot about how things work, particularly the creative brain. We’re thinking about performance-based problem solving. A team, for example, has five minutes to write a story in front of a screaming audience. Typically, one comes up with solutions in private. Readers read finished work, typically.

So, why not math problems, too. We put Hendree Milward on the case, one of our fine Math faculty at Tunxis, and he’s thinking about it.

I’m not sure exactly what John and Steve had in mind for the bigger picture. I think they plan to have contests like this in all disciplines. They definitely gave me an interesting thought problem though.

I’m wondering f we can have teams of math people work on a random problem of professional difficulty and the team would have five minutes to crank out algorithms.