Measures of Central Tendency: Mean, Median and Mode
The making of a scientist
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7. THE MAKING OF A SCIENTIST
When I was just a little kid, very small in a highchair,
my father brought home a lot of little bathroom tiles of different
colours. We played with them, my father setting them up vertically on
my highchair like dominoes, and I would push one end so they would
all go down.
Then after a while, I’d help set them up. Pretty soon,
we’re setting them up in a more complicated way: two white tiles and
a blue tile, two white tile and a blue tile, and so on. When my mother
saw that, she said,”Leave the poor child alone. If he wants to put a
blue tile , let him to put a blue tile.”
But my father said,”No, I want to show him what patterns
are like and how interesting they are. It’s a kind of elementary
mathematics.”So he started very early to tell me about the world
and how interesting it is.
8. ABOUT THE TEXT
Dr. Richard Feynman was a famous American
physicist who studied matter and energy. ‘The Making of
a Scientist’ is a memoir by Feynman about his father and
how he became a scientist.
The author explains that he learned from his
father the traits that made him a good scientist, as
indicated by the title of the piece. Feynman’s father
started by introducing his little son to patterns. It was
possible that he was teaching him maths- something
even more important than patterns. Thus Feynman
started to learn about the world and how interesting it
was.
9. QUESTIONS
1.Who is the author of ‘The Making of a
Scientist’?
2. Why did Feynman’s father insist that the
tiles should be set up in a particular pattern?
10. ANSWERS
1. Richard Feynman
2. By setting up the tiles in a particular
pattern, Feynman’s father wished to show
hi different kinds of interesting patterns
which formed a part of elementary
mathematics.
