How to Spell the Fight

Following a thread, from string figures though algorithms. James R. Murphy, a math teacher in La Guardia, New York, regarded mathematics as the most powerful and manipulable abstract language available to humans. To acquaint students who don't "like" math with abstract and systematical thinking, he put a piece of string in their hands and taught them to make string figures. How to Spell the Fight follows a thread that has been running through our fingers from centuries past till the present day, morphing from the tangible string figures that join our hands in childhood to the more elusive computational algorithms that engage our fingers today, inviting us to rethink current paradigms of cognition, education, and power.