Schoolbook Error/Discovery

Liam Squires is a fifth-grader at Virginia’s HM Pearson Elementary. He is now famous—after a story that is in print in today’s Sunday New York Times. Squires saw that the diagrams of igneous and sedimentary rocks had the wrong labels.

The book was a “Level 5” tome encompassing Earth Science. The book was approved by the school district back in 2015—but a diagram mistake had managed to creep through. Noticing the pictures of igneous and sedimentary rocks were miscaptioned, Squires told his teacher, who told the school, who then told Five Ponds Press. Who sent a wonderful personal letter back to Squires.

Anthony Picciano’s blog has further details of the story.

Open Problems

Let’s send Squires some “proofs” for checking? Would he catch that out of three references to the “Bell basis” in my textbook with Ken, one of them is incorrect (should be “Hadamard basis”)? How about the next P=NP proof?