(a + b)2 = a2 + b2. Right? “No, of course not,” you say. Or maybe you say “Yes, of course.” If you say yes, you’re making the same mistake that 42% of high-school students make. I just invented that statistic on the spot,… Read More ›
Month: November 2012
MIT does not equal Mitt
They don’t even sound alike. An MIT alumna was nearly prevented from voting in Florida because she was wearing an MIT shirt. A poll worker thought she was illegally campaigning for Romney inside the polling place.
What motivates teachers and students?
This is important! You’ve got to set aside ten minutes and watch this TED talk by Dan Pink. While it’s not specifically about teachers, nor specifically about students, it tells us a lot about what motivates and doesn’t motivate both groups. Presented by… Read More ›
Math wins!
This morning’s XKCD:
Fractal pancakes!
Maybe some of my precalculus students will make fractal pancakes for the Fractal Fair in March (though I’m not sure where we could serve them, as the Fair is held in the school library). Here’s what they look like:
An excellent way to improve a school's test scores
What’s the best way for a school to improve its test scores? That’s easy: you get rid of all the low-performing students, of course. Or you send truant officers to their homes on the morning of test day, and the… Read More ›
How many other good teachers are going to quit for similar reasons?
A North Carolina teacher named Kris Nielsen recently posted a letter that has been finding its way around the Internet. As a teacher in Massachusetts, I am fortunate not to have the problems that she reports, but they ring all… Read More ›
Emulating the TI-84
American schools have been using Texas Instruments calculators for more than a quarter of a century now. They have become the de facto standard. More recently, computers and projectors have become ubiquitous, so you would think that we would have a better… Read More ›
Boston Cream
I had never heard of Canadian crime fiction writer Howard Shrier before reading Boston Cream, part of Shrier’s series featuring Toronto detective Jonah Geller. In a recent interview, the author said that “some Canadian readers have said that these books are… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 