Be sure to read Anand Vaishnav’s article, headlined “Suburban high schools try to ease up on teen stress,” in today’s Globe. My favorite paragraph quotes former Lincoln-Sudbury colleague Charlie Ruopp, now principal of Wayland High School: Wayland High School tried… Read More ›
Month: July 2005
Math for democracy
I highly recommend “Mathematics and democracy: the case for quantitative literacy,” published by the National Council on Education and the Disciplines. What they’re calling “quantitative literacy” is very close to what we call “quantitative reasoning” at CSA. This online collection,… Read More ›
Straight as an arrow
Too many students (and too many parents, and even some teachers) view the process of learning math as a one-dimensional arrow, in which the courses come in a fixed order and lead inexorably to calculus and beyond. The most successful… Read More ›
It ain't fun if it's easy
An article in UMass Boston Magazine, Volume 9 Number 1, introduces Rick Jensen, the new head of the UMass Center for Environmental Health, Science, and Technology: Roderick (Rick) Jensen sees puzzles everwhere. When his daughter told him in second grade… Read More ›
Super Size Me vs. Outfoxed
Having recently watched both Super Size Me and Outfoxed — well, only a bit of the latter — I was wondering why I had such different reactions to these two tendentious documentaries. Super Size Me held my attention and kept… Read More ›
Simpson's Paradox
Thanks to Rob Campbell, one of the Harvard students who is working with me as a teaching assistant (“mentor”) in the Crimson Summer Academy, for pointing me to this wonderful example of Simpson’s Paradox: a statistics page at SUNY Oswego… Read More ›
Simpsons math
One of the more unusual websites for us math types, simpsonsmath.com, reveals quite a few mathematical connections on The Simpsons. Check it out!
Two wonderful mathematical puzzles
I’ve recently been stretching my skills with two new mathematical puzzles, Sudoku and Planarity. Thanks to the Boston Globe and other papers, Sudoku has now become quite popular. Although the Sudoku page claims that it’s non-mathematical, these puzzles actually involve… Read More ›
Unitarians and Catholics
From the continuing saga of the Library Committee of the Dorchester Historical Society: I come across an issue of the First Parish Church newsletter from 1956. One page includes an annotated reproduction of an ad that the Catholic Church had… Read More ›
Sam Yoon
It’s a bit hard to believe, but Sam Yoon is the first Asian candidate ever to run for public office in the City of Boston. As an at-large candidate for City Council, he is making the rounds to try to… Read More ›
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