No, I’m not talking about Tom Lehrer’s famous song, “The Elements,” nor about n–2 others of the n parodies of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Major General’s song, where n must be a large number. I’m talking about “I Am the very Model of a Biblical… Read More ›
Who remembers diagramming sentences? I do, I do! If you’re my age, you never forget the experience of diagramming sentences. Love it or hate it (I was one of the few who loved it), you don’t forget it. Maybe you forget… Read More ›
Barbara and I had a yummy take-out dinner last night from the new Thai restaurant in Fields Corner, Just Thai: chicken wings with ginger glaze, ground peanuts, and scallion; spring rolls; scallion pancakes; Tom Yum soup; shrimp pad thai; and broccoli… Read More ›
Will he go? Of course he will! We hope. He says he’s “not sure” that he will accept the results. I have just finished reading the short but vital book by Lawrence Douglas with the full title of Will He Go?… Read More ›
That headline isn’t very helpful, as you have no doubt figured out. After all, it’s spelled “GIF,” but it’s pronounced with a hard G as in “gift” — or perhaps with a soft G as in “giraffe.” But which? You probably know the answer…… Read More ›
Nobody tires of Mandelbrot Set images, especially the zoomed-in ones. But there aren’t very many non-mathematicians who can explain them — though I hope my former Precalculus students can do so. For everyone else, you really need to watch a… Read More ›
Hmmm… how can you communicate with someone when the two of you have no language in common? In linguistics this has been a major conundrum, especially in earlier centuries when there was no worldwide communication; in science fiction it has… Read More ›
William thinks he fits in this box. William is wrong.
The philosophers in the program were kind and excellent teachers, but the math professors I met in those days were somewhat less skilled at teaching or relating to people. One told us that we should think of him as a… Read More ›
What do we lose by teaching remotely? Here is another follow-up inspired by Patrick Honner in this age of COVID. Honner makes the following important observation: When I taught the IVT last week, I couldn’t walk around class and look… Read More ›
