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 ›
Public school hours & college curricula
As chair of the Library Committee of the Dorchester Historical Society, I spend a few hours each month working with some other volunteers to catalog our collection of historic documents. Today I catalogued an immense 5-volume history of the local… Read More ›
Infinite pizzas
An article in this week’s Somerville Journal gives free publicity to a pizza joint in Ball Square, the Urban Gourmet: …We offer about three dozen toppings with an infinite variety of combinations. .. Wow!
Numb3rs So Far
Now that the first season of Numb3rs is in reruns, I’m finally getting around to watching this show and have seen three episodes at this point. So far, so good. I haven’t yet seen the episode referred to in the… Read More ›
What's wrong with UMass?
Many — probably most — of my Weston students look down on UMass Amherst. Certainly it’s not the choice of our most successful students. I heard one junior disparaging it to the extent that he would consider his life ruined… Read More ›
Such a well-qualified ambassador
It’s nice to know that our president appoints such well-informed ambassadors, isn’t it? Here is an excerpt from a CBC interview with our new ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins: Q: Have you ever been to Canada before? A: Ah, many… Read More ›
Neurological benefits of blogging?
Neurologists Fernette and Brock Eide analyze the Brain of the Blogger. Here are some of their claims: …our mental activities actually cause changes in the structures of our brains — not only what we think, but how we think as… Read More ›
Blogs in the math classroom?
Blogs are public writing. We want our students to publish their work — to take ownership of it, to take personal responsibility for it, to take pride in it. These goals apply not only to English class but also in… Read More ›
Radians
From Trigonometry for Dummies, by Mary Jane Sterling: Measuring angles in degrees is easier, but measuring angles in radians is preferable when doing computations. The radian is more exact because the radius, circumference, or area of the circle is involved…. Read More ›
Adequate Yearly Progress
A Boston Globe article on October 3, 2004, included Weston High School among the schools cited by the Department of Education for failure to make Adequate Yearly Progress on the No Child Too Far Ahead Act. Sorry, I mean the… Read More ›
The Achievement Gap
Yesterday I wrote about the pressure to take honors math, but I didn’t even consider the reasons for this pressure. The implied one — which I tried to debunk — was that honors math is necessary in order to get… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 