cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

I'm trying to use my other account at least occasionally so I posted about my Yuletide gifts there, including the salon-relevant 12k fic that features Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Saint Germain, Caroline Daum (Fredersdorf's wife), and Groundhog Day tropes! (Don't need to know canon.)

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yeah, I think we're talking past each other, but some of it probably has to do with applied math vs. pure math. At least half of the math I did, and definitely the harder half, and definitely the only half that was really interesting to me, was proofs, and that is where I would consistently spend days thinking about how to arrive at the answer.

Problem sets...I mean, those classes tended to be much easier, and I took them because they were required for the math degree, not because they were the kind of math I wanted to do. But even when I was taught all the necessary math, in physics or in math, there was a very good chance that I had to think about how to do the homework assignments incrementally. In applied math, I'm pretty sure I had to make incremental progress in calculus and linear algebra, at least. Differential equations maybe not, I remember not understanding a thing that went on in that class and still being able to solve the problems effortlessly--I made almost a 100% in the class and felt like I never actually learned differential equations. But with the majority of the classes, I did not consistently just sit down and apply a skill I knew. I often had to think about how to apply what I'd learned and come back later, making incremental progress.

I also thought about this last night and came to the conclusion that cognitively, the difference between solving a problem incrementally over a week and solving a problem incrementally over the course of an hour during a timed exam...felt to me like a difference in degree, not in kind. It was just a question of how many times I had to set the problem on the back burner mentally, let it simmer, come back, add a little that I'd thought of, and then go off again. I don't feel like I would have been especially ill prepared for a problem that took months.

Years is qualitatively different, because then you have to think about whether you've chosen your problem well, and no, classwork doesn't prepare you for that. You don't get to choose your problems!

But if I'd gone to grad school and tackled hard problems, like for a thesis, I feel like the throwing myself at a hard problem I didn't know how to solve and making incremental progress on it would have been the one part I was prepared for! That was my life!

Thinking about it, one hard part of the transition from coursework to research would have been the shift from a textbook to academic journals. When you're not throwing yourself incrementally at a problem using material that you know is in the 150 pages you've covered so far this semester, and all you have to do is flip back through the book and hope you recognize what you need, but when someone out there has probably written something useful that hopefully you will find. That is radically different, and classwork doesn't prepare you for it. But up until you write your master's thesis, at least at my university, you're doing classwork, and as mentioned, much of the same classwork that I did as an undergrad.

Now, how much of the fact that I had to throw myself at problems I didn't know how to solve was because of poor teaching? I don't even know what "poor" or "good" means by current standards (as opposed to my imaginary reforms); I know that every teacher I had for math taught pretty much the same way, and the hardness of the class was just a function of how fast the teacher covered the material and how they graded. (And how familiar you already were with the material.) The teacher began at the beginning of the textbook, lectured on a chapter, gave the students a homework assignment testing them on that chapter, and then went on to the next chapter. That's the same way history was taught, and physics, and chemistry, and French, and almost everything else I took.

And that is the *wrong way* to teach, imo. Me, at least (and as I keep observing, there's a reason we're not doing that in salon--I don't think it's the right way to teach many people).

I know you mentioned in one of these discussions that you feel strongly about problem sets and pedagogy, and I would like to hear your thoughts. I can tell you that forcing me to do a problem set as soon as I learned a new concept and then moving on to a new concept with a new problem set was responsible for both 1) why problem sets were hard when they were hard (often they were easy), 2) why I never went beyond the undergraduate level even when I aced the individual classes and they were too easy. And the same thing is true for proofs, where maybe I had a better conceptual grasp than with applied math, but the work was orders of magnitude harder, and certainly harder than it needed to be.

Chapter-by-chapter, test-as-you-go ruined math for me in the long term. I didn't figure out what I should have been doing until several years after I had given up on advancing in math and finished grad school in the humanities, having forgotten all I learned of math.

I knew at the time I was missing a good grasp of the concepts, but I didn't know how to acquire them except by doing more of the same thing, working harder when what I needed was to work smarter.

plus maybe I just knew a lot more people who procrastinated a lot so we did problem sets the night before??

Yeah, I would start immediately on my own, and then meet up with people well before it was due. And at the end of the study group, there would frequently be unsolved problems that you would then go off and think about on your own again. Starting the night before, I think I would have just failed everything (barring the too-easy classes that I complained about). ;)

From:

cahn

(sorry, Fritz, but the author of Meditations wins over the author of The Anti Machiavel)

AHAHAHAHA
...yeah.
(I haven't read it, see also even more terribly underread in this area than in others, but I'd heard of one of these before salon and not the other.)

I do find Duncan's argument that the alternative to signalling Commodus as the Chosen One would have been killing Commodus or risk civil war - pretty convincing, I must admit. Marcus did his best to shape his son into a good future Emperor during his life time, and if there were signs, he probably hoped it was just phase that would pass.

That makes sense, along with absolute power at a young age maybe being a bad idea for lots of people...

How he died: Supposedly his favourite mistress, Marcia, discovered she was about to become his dead ex mistress along with some other about to be discarded favourites (he'd done that kind of thing before), and conspired with them against him. She poisoned him; he vomited it up. She then called his favourite wrestling partner, Narcissus, who strangled Commodus in his bath.

This is reminding me of the relevant subplot in the Josephus third book. Though I suppose maybe all it says is that once you discard enough people by killing them, you can't be surprised when a few of them decide that maybe they ought to band together and act first.

From:

cahn

[personal profile] cahn, if you're reading this: just as a refresher, the book is primarily about Donald Cameron of Lochiel, who was the clan chief of one of the largest Highland clans involved in the ‘45 on the Jacobite side.

Ha - thank you as always for the orientation!

'at his birth, the silver shoe which had come into the family's possession by supernatural means could not be made to fit the infant John's foot'!

Heh, this is great.

Dungallon gave ‘very ingenious and satisfactory answers to such questions as I asked him’, and that he was ‘a person who procured very good in intelligence’. Would he really have done this if he gave himself up as a ruse?? Apparently he didn't tell them where Lochiel was, though. I guess we'll never know his motives. This also reminds me of Anne Mackintosh and her husband--I've seen speculations that they were not actually at odds, but that they were consciously each picking a side so that they had insurance whichever side won. Which of course many families did, but not as dramatically!

Oh, yeah, that's a good point that he might have been trying to play both sides a little. Or maybe giving some true intelligence so they'd believe him when he gave false intelligence about Lochiel?

‘There had been something close to complete accord among the Scottish Highlanders to serve their rightful king.’ Really?

Hee! I'm always grateful when you guys point out the unreliable narrators.

From:

cahn

*nods* Algebra/galois theory was proofs, and I remember having to think about that one a lot. (That professor was great, I loved his class.) I took at least two? more math classes that were supposed to be proof-based, but I don't remember enough about them now to actually remember a whole lot about what kinds of problems we got. (And one of them was the ill-fated topology, where I'm sure the problem sets should have been proofs, but B and I basically learned the whole class the month before exams and then I, at least, forgot everything about it. I don't remember in the faintest what we did about the problem sets given that we weren't learning anything. Possibly the professor forgot to give us homework??)

you feel strongly about problem sets and pedagogy, and I would like to hear your thoughts.

These thoughts are not very profound (although surprisingly controversial), it's that there seems to be this strain in elementary education of NOT giving problem sets at all, even for (especially for, it seems like) skill-building, which is just ludicrous. (I totally am on board, of course, with giving problems that are more interesting than extremely dry drill -- but you can't just not practice the skills.) My kids' school has tried to do it this way, though Good Math Teacher has always tried to push back, and it looks like in the last couple of years there has been more pushback.

ETA: Early elementary math, of course, is another beast entirely, where a lot of the applicable concepts you can practice in ways other than written problem sets.

Edited Date: 2023-01-16 06:16 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

it's that there seems to be this strain in elementary education of NOT giving problem sets at all

Ah, yes, if we're talking about elementary school, then I'm on board with a problem-set oriented approach. For the simple reason that you're going to actually use this in real life.

Starting around middle school and definitely by high school, whether you're going to use this math is highly career- and interest-dependent. If you're not, at best you need the concepts. If you are--well, I submit that you need the concepts all the more.

So I would make problem sets a whole lot more optional at this stage, make it clear what skills are needed for what, and teach how to acquire these skills if you decide later in life that you're going to want them. (Much of my pedagogical reform is teaching students what information is out there, why you would need it, and how to go about learning it, over preselecting some random subset of information that may or may not be important for them, then forcing them to learn it when they're just going to forget it.)

The one branch of math I know I would make mandatory at the post-elementary math level is statistical concepts. Because at one point I made excellent grades based on my (promptly-forgotten) memorized ability to calculate sigma and whatnot, but I made it to almost the end of grad school without understanding what a standard deviation was, and most people still don't.

Number of times I've needed to calculate a standard deviation in my life: well, maybe for my dissertation, but other than that, 0.

Number of times I've needed to understand what a standard deviation is? A very, very large number.

People are going to encounter claims about science in the news/on social media, and statistical concepts are just not taught. You get problem sets on calculating Greek and Roman letters, but not taught how to evaluate claims, and then we end up with a very ill-informed population.

Trigonometry, which I had a whole year of in high school? It was fun because I was a math geek, but that's not the class I would make mandatory for all college-bound students.

From:

luzula

Ha ha, oops, that was me. Just saw that it was posted anonymously...

From:

mildred_of_midgard

plus he had travel expenses to get to Lisbon

Having reread this letter to incorporate it into my essay, it wasn't his expenses to Lisbon (which I thought was weird, he was on the British fleet, supposedly as part of the navy), but his expenses in 1740 back to Prussia, which makes way more sense. It explains not only why he didn't have the money, but why he was asking Fritz, why Fritz was willing to pay this expense, and why the Brits were like "lol no." It also tells us that in 1740 Peter still felt pretty good about getting his 3 years of back pay despite Caroline's death; it wasn't that he borrowed the money and then she died.

Also, good news: my essay is getting close to where I'm ready to show it to people! If not quite to publishable state yet. I have a three-day weekend and have made good progress on the editing. I might ask you to do at least a content beta read after all,

cahn!

From:

selenak

Januar 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born! -

Nothing like starting the day with a Lehndorff quote from 1785.:)

EC, the entertaining history YouTube channel I've linked a couple of times - last time with the Diocletian cartoons, has started to do a series on Fritz. His Monstrous Father is the title of the first installment.

cahn, this one isn't as obviously wrong as the Bad Gays pod cast or the more recent BBC thing with Stephen Fry, it's reasonably good a start, in fact, but it does have a couple of tiny and not so tiny mistakes, including one about Mildred's favourite subject, Katte's execution, which, in fairness, is a mistake Tim Blanning also makes. I dare you to list all the mistakes you find in this first installment and enjoy (err, as much as one can the tale of an abusive childhood and youth) the show!

mildred_of_midgard, Peter does get mentioned - not by name, and not in connection with the escape attempt, but he's referred to as the page Fritz got caught with and who was subsequently exiled to a border garnison. (BTW, the fact that he and Fritz were caught fooling around is stated as fact instead of "maybe?" is of course another issue, but at least he made it into the saga instead of being erased entirely!

Edited Date: 2023-01-18 06:47 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Katte's execution, which, in fairness, is a mistake Tim Blanning also makes.

Several authors make it! I was looking through a bunch of biographies for "who says what about Fritz and the candles?", and I was surprised at how many axes there were at Katte's execution. All fanfic writers are hereby forgiven.

Btw, I never did find the "it was his jailer" anecdote in any of those bios, just the Fouquet story. And that's weird, because the "it was his jailer" story is the one I remember recounting to other people before salon! Selena or Felis, do remember where you've run into this story in the past, and if so, which version? I'm not promising to write an academic essay on our findings, but I'm not promising *not* to, either. ;)

BTW, the fact that he and Fritz were caught fooling around is stated as fact instead of "maybe?" is of course another issue

We decided they weren't caught fooling around, though, remember? It turned out FW received an anonymous letter that tipped him off to Fritz's escape attempt plans. I mean, we don't *know* they weren't also caught, but we do know there was the anonymous letter at the time and that FW acted quickly. And that made a lot more sense psychologically of how FW reacted (we really thought it was an underreaction for the sin of sodomy).

From:

mildred_of_midgard

it's that there seems to be this strain in elementary education of NOT giving problem sets at all

Out of curiosity, is this part of the trend to not give elementary school kids homework at all, in your observation, or separate?

From:

luzula

I haven't been able to trace the "refused to let them have a chaplain" claim back further than the 19th century (although I haven't really tried, because resisting temptation). Does your book by chance give a source?
Nope! As I noted frustratedly at another point in the text, this book is not great about giving sources. : ( So if you've also read that he was a Catholic, I am not going to insist that this book is right. If it was relevant to my fic writing, I would put effort into finding out which is the true claim... But I don't think I am invested enough to research it otherwise.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Who's who:

Olympe Mancini: Mother of Eugene of Savoy, lover of Louis XIV, niece of Cardinal Mazarin, exiled because of the Affair of the Poisons.

selenak has more here.

Louvois: Minister of War under Louis XIV, showed up a lot in the Man in the Iron Mask episode, refused Eugene advancement in the French army, leading to Eugene's defection to Austria, with fateful consequences.

What's what:

According to Henri Pigaillem, author of a 2005 bio of Eugene that I am reading for French practice (and at this rate I will finish next year), Louvois actually had a thing for Olympe when she and Louis were an item, but she wouldn't give him the time of day. So he ended up with a grudge against her and started denying her and her children opportunities and money whenever possible.

Briefly he tried to reconcile with her, but then his resentment got the upper hand and he was the one who implicated her in the Affair of the Poisons and got her banned.

I don't know if it's true, mind you, but this is what I have read. Will let you know if the Eugene bio turns up anything else interesting (I found it because it was the cited as the source of the claim that an envoy called Eugene gay long before he left France and supposedly alienated Liselotte, whom biographers like to call the only person to ever refer to Eugene as gay).

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yeah, I know the feeling. :/ One of the places where I've read he was Catholic is McLynn's "Issues and Motives in the Jacobite Rising of 1745", but he also doesn't give a direct citation (at least I don't remember one, I would have to log into JSTOR to check).

From:

luzula

Re: Dungallon turning informer, the really famous informer was Murray of Broughton, who had been secretary to the Prince, and turned King’s Evidence. From what I've read, his information led to the hanging of various of his earlier companions. I haven't read much about him as a person (perhaps Mildred has?), but I do wonder about his motivations. He was actually a driving force behind getting the Rising going, so why betray it later? There is of course the obvious motivation of saving his own skin. But given that so many of the executed Jacobites died proudly and unrepentantly, he must have known that he would be despised for betraying his companions. Which he really was. Also, his wife Margaret was an ardent Jacobite, and I wonder what she thought of him! He has written memoirs, which I assume contain self-justifications, but I haven't read them...

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I haven't read much about him as a person (perhaps Mildred has?)

Alas, no!

From:

luzula

Probably it is inevitable that I will someday read McLynn's biography of BPC...

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I've mentioned that that I've read several times that Louis XV had a secret service that was at odds with official French policy. Well, in my reading, I've finally come across a concrete example.

The "Secret du Roi" was headed by the Comte de Broglie (whom we've met, not the wave-particle guy ;)), who supported King August III in Poland in the 1750s/1760s, when he was having conflicts against the nobility in France. Whereas Choiseul, the official Foreign minister, supported the Saxons and Poles in their efforts to get *rid* of August III.

And the footnote says that it was, predictably, actually way more complicated than that! "This is only a brief and greatly simplified description of a far more complex internal and international situation." It then goes on to cite 8 different sources in English, French, and German, all of which look fascinating.

I might look into this at some point, you know how I am about complex foreign policy situations. ;)

But in the meantime, that does sound incredibly confusing for anyone who was getting orders from two French chains of command!

ETA: Oh, the book I got this from is Liaisons Dangereuses: Sex, Law, and Diplomacy in the Age of Frederick the Great. It hasn't been quite as exciting as I'd hoped from the title (what a title!), because it's focused on four obscure people in Hamburg and only tangentially mentions any events or individuals that we've heard of (Heinrich comes up a couple times as the former regimental commander of one of the individuals), but a lot of that is my concentration being absolutely shot and unwilling to do anything these days but ~~write Medici fix-it~~ practice German and to a lesser extent French.

selenak might get more out of it. It does at least seem to be well researched.

Edited Date: 2023-01-18 08:08 pm (UTC)

From:

luzula

I am currently reading a great book about the history of calculus, which, given salon’s interest in math, I might summarize here. : ) Meanwhile, I will give you the Frederician tidbit that Leonhard Euler (super important and influential mathematician) first worked in Saint Petersburg, but in 1741, Fritz offered him a job as director of his astronomical observatory. The book claims that Fritz was deeply disappointed with Euler who lacked the flair of Voltaire and several of his other collected intellectuals. Euler, in turn, was frustrated by the time-consuming tasks to which he was assigned. In 1766 he moved back to Saint Petersburg and Catherine the Great, who offered him a position where he was more free to do the math he wanted. No sources for any of this, though.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

This is pretty much exactly what I've read, yes. (Also that Euler was pious and didn't fit in well at Fritz's freethinking, religion-trashing court.)

Also, when Fritz became king in 1740, one of his first requests (his first request?) to Suhm was, "Please try to get me Euler from St. Petersburg!" and Suhm DID. :D

(Do I need to explain who Suhm is, or are we good?)

Catherine the Great, who offered him a position where he was more free to do the math he wanted.

And paid better. This is why I have a fanfic whose title alludes to Catherine as the poacher of employees. ;) Fritz was tight-fisted and Catherine was generous and she poached good people from him.

From:

luzula

Ah, cool that you have more details! Re: Suhm, I am fully capable of looking things up on

rheinsberg. : ) *looks him up*

From:

selenak

Re: Euler, as far as I can recall from Maupertuis' biography, Euler - who was basically Maupertuis' right hand man at the Academy and had been running it ever since Maupertuis got sick - would have been the natural next President after Maupertuis' death, but Fritz wanted another Frenchman, and Euler rightfully felt offended and quit. Now that's just how the Maupertuis biographer put it, and maybe she was wrong, but it feels ic.

Edited Date: 2023-01-19 08:36 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

Okay, I note the title for future reference and spare time.

From:

luzula

That sounds ridiculous and also unfair--no wonder Euler quit!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

It is not lacking in gossip or sensationalism, I will give it that! (I suspect I may actually be getting to the good part, after a lot of law and diplomacy. ;))

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, right, I forgot about that! (The problem with the Maupertuis bio is I really wanted to know what was in it, but it was so dry it was hard to even find the human interest parts memorable.)