Author Archives

In 2018 I semi-retired by retiring from Weston High School after my 21st year teaching mathematics there. This was also my 44th year as a teacher altogether. In 2023 I retired fully, adding in my 18 years at Harvard’s Crimson Summer Academy each summer. For 21 years I had taught at the Saturday Course in Milton, MA, and I used to serve on the board of the Dorchester Historical Society.

I read, cook, and spend a lot of time building my model railroad. For some reason I’m left with less free time than would be ideal, considering that I’m supposed to be retired, but somehow I also manage to devote time to my wife, Barbara, and to our varying number of cats (once up to six, but now sadly down to one).

Larry Davidson
ljd@larrydavidson.com

• Ivy Restaurant

  By ljd42 on February 16, 2008

  As I mentioned a couple of days ago, before seeing My Fair Lady we had dinner at Ivy, a nouveau-Italian restaurant in the Ladder District. Before I give my comments, let’s take a look at a couple of published reviews…. Read More ›

• dBar

  By ljd42 on February 15, 2008

  Barbara and I had a first-rate Valentine’s Day dinner at dBar last night. I had reviewed it two years ago right after it opened, we’ve been there once in the interim, and I am pleased to report that it continues… Read More ›

• My Fair Lady

  By ljd42 on February 14, 2008

  Barbara and I went to see My Fair Lady at the Opera House last night. Not surprisingly, I thoroughly enjoyed this production of the greatest musical in history. 24-year-old Lisa O’Hare was especially effective in her outstanding performance as Eliza…. Read More ›

• A calculator that promotes understanding

  By ljd42 on February 13, 2008

  I try not to plug specific products. I especially try not to plug products that I haven’t even seen yet. But… the new calculator from Texax Instruments is clearly not just another calculator. From its specs, the TI-Nspire looks like… Read More ›

• Post #500!

  By ljd42 on February 12, 2008

  According to Blogger, this is my 500th post! It’s hard for me to believe that I’ve written 500 of these short (and sometimes not-so-short) essays. One of my Weston students asked in class why anyone would bother keeping a blog,… Read More ›

• Two Weston students think about poverty

  By ljd42 on February 11, 2008

  I love teaching in Weston. But occasionally I have to admit that some of my students are out of touch with reality. Here are two recent incidents: The first was a conversation between two ninth-graders in the Math Office. It… Read More ›

• The Globe corrects a small error about Dorchester

  By ljd42 on February 10, 2008

  As I observed on January 27, that day’s Boston Globe erred in calling the Paul Revere House the oldest building in Boston. Today they corrected their error: Because of a reporting error, a Jan. 27 story on the Paul Revere… Read More ›

• Is Prisoner's Dilemma still teachable?

  By ljd42 on February 8, 2008

  For over three decades I’ve been teaching the Prisoner’s Dilemma. This is a classic problem — perhaps the classic problem — of game theory, the misleadingly named field that lies at the intersection of mathematics and economics (with a dash… Read More ›

• Maybe Yelp knows…finally…that Dorchester is part of Boston

  By ljd42 on February 6, 2008

  Like many people, I occasionally visit Yelp to see what people are saying about local restaurants and other businesses. More often, I visit it to find out about out-of-town restaurants when I need that information. So Chris and Erin immediately… Read More ›

• Mad Mouse

  By ljd42 on February 4, 2008

  Mad Mouse is the third book by Chris Grabenstein that I’ve reviewed in this blog. I was enthusiastic about Tilt-A-Whirl, but far less so about Hell for the Holidays. So now I’ve finished reading Mad Mouse, another book in the… Read More ›

• The Beautiful Miscellaneous

  By ljd42 on February 2, 2008

  I have to confess that I have mixed feelings about The Beautiful Miscellaneous, a novel by Dominic Smith. I was initially attracted by the premise of the book: a physicist’s son who does not live up to his father’s hopes… Read More ›

• When am I ever going to use this stuff?

  By ljd42 on February 1, 2008

  I know, I’ve written about this topic before, but it bears further consideration. Too often I hear the question, “When will I ever use this stuff?” This is a common question in Weston, and surely elsewhere as well. Sometimes the… Read More ›

• How do you read email when there's so much spam?

  By ljd42 on January 31, 2008

  Mark Bernstein has an observation and a question: I no longer trust my email. If you send me mail, I will probably receive it, but I’m far from certain that it won’t be lost in the vast deluge of spam…. Read More ›

• How about an Obama/Bloomberg ticket?

  By ljd42 on January 30, 2008

  Now that Obama is starting to catch up with Clinton in the national polls, and now that Edwards has dropped out, some people are starting to talk about the possibility of an Obama-Edwards ticket. While that would have a certain… Read More ›

• Courtesy: a double standard?

  By ljd42 on January 28, 2008

  One of my colleagues has asked us not to cut in line in the cafeteria, correctly pointing out that “adults set the tone and serve as personal examples of respectful behavior.” I agree with the text, but I have some… Read More ›

• Surely the Globe can't be wrong! But the oldest house in Boston is actually in Dorchester, not in the North End

  By ljd42 on January 27, 2008

  It’s simple logic: A sentence begins this way in today’s Boston Globe: The grounds of the Paul Revere House, Boston’s oldest building and a historic Colonial landmark,… The Paul Revere House was built in 1680 (plus or minus a year… Read More ›

• The Witch of Agnesi

  By ljd42 on January 25, 2008

  What math teacher could resist a mystery titled The Witch of Agnesi. Of course if you’re neither a math teacher nor a mathematician, you’re probably scratching your head right now, wondering, “What is he talking about?” Well, the Witch of… Read More ›

• Defaults

  By ljd42 on January 24, 2008

  “Default, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…” No, that doesn’t seem quite right. I don’t think Shakespeare had Cassius talking about defaults, did he? But it’s what I think of when we just assume that defaults… Read More ›

• Collaborating with colleagues

  By ljd42 on January 23, 2008

  We had an interesting K–12 professional development (PD) day yesterday (as our students were enjoying a four-day weekend and we teachers had to settle for three days off). The theme for the year is differentiated instruction (DI); the specific focus… Read More ›

• Firing a teacher, part two

  By ljd42 on January 22, 2008

  A first-year teacher was fired last week for making a bad judgment call. Depending on the version of the story you believe, he either duct-taped a student’s mouth shut or gave her some masking tape and asked her to tape… Read More ›