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
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High-school dropout = criminal?
Last night, Emily Rooney’s Greater Boston included a segment on truancy in the Boston public schools. One of her guests, Suffolk County Sheriff Andrea Cabral, whom I usually admire and respect, claimed that 50% of high-school dropouts (from Boston public… Read More ›
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Unlucky in Law
I have a mixed reaction to Unlucky in Law, by Perri O’Shaughnessy. It’s a decent enough legal mystery, more-or-less in the John Grisham or Scott Turow vein. And it has an undeniably interesting plot, involving the Russian-American community in Monterey…. Read More ›
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Irrationality
Rudbeckia Hirta reports that her college students have trouble understanding irrational numbers: Most of my students felt that 3 * sqrt(2) / 5 * sqrt(2) was irrational because of the sqrt(2). They didn’t remember that you can “cancel” (hate that… Read More ›
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An AP course makes the resume shine
As in a great many other high schools, Weston sees more and more students each year taking Advanced Placement courses. Why is this happening? And is it a good thing? It’s easy to see why it’s happening. Weston students are… Read More ›
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Maths
It’s helpful to read what the Brits say about maths teaching. I’ve recently started reading Mathematics in School, a journal published by the Mathematical Association (MA), which is more or less the British equivalent of our National Council of Teachers… Read More ›
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Overheard in Dorchester
So I’m waiting in line at the deli section of the Stop & Shop at 545 Freeport St. in Dorchester, and the customer in front of me asks the clerk a question: Customer: Where are we? Clerk [in a surprised… Read More ›
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"worksheet for students: am i insane?"
The aforementioned Jill Walker has posted a fascinating article entitled “worksheet for students: am i insane?” No, she’s not insane, although some of my students think she’s misguided. But I think she’s on to something. Take a good look at… Read More ›
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Fractal dimension retraction or converse error?
As Ivars Peterson and others have pointed out, Jackson Pollock’s paintings can be analyzed mathematically as fractals, and they turn out to have a distinctive fractal dimension. As various articles have pointed out, inauthentic (forged) Pollocks have incorrect fractal dimensions…. Read More ›
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Second Life or WoW?
Would I be interested in joining a 3-D virtual world in my copious free time, which doesn’t really exist? Some of my students have been trying to persuade me to play World of Warcraft (Wow). (That was the standard acronym,… Read More ›
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St. Alban's Fire
Archer Mayor’s well-crafted series of police procedurals has a highly deserved reputation for strong and careful plotting. As a Vermonter, Mayor writes in a style that convincingly evokes the state of Vermont — as much so as Lawrence Block evokes… Read More ›
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Happy numbers, unhappy families
One of my students came across the Wikipedia article on Happy Numbers and asked about it in precalculus class. This is the sort of topic for which Wikipedia is an excellent source; in fact, if I wanted to know about… Read More ›
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An ethical dilemma
It is unethical, as I’m sure you know, for a teacher to reveal any individual student’s grade to another student. (Students reveal their own grades all the time, of course, but that’s their decision, not ours.) This principle placed one… Read More ›
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A Stab in the Dark
Lawrence Block’s 1981 Matthew Scudder mystery, A Stab in the Dark, has recently been reissued in audiobook format. If you’ve only read some of the recent Scudder novels, where he’s a non-drinking alcoholic, you’ll find that A Stab in the… Read More ›
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Maybe we should try this in high school
Rudbeckia Hirta, the pseudonymous math professor from a state university in the south, recounts a story with a delicious little idea at the end: So today I saw one of the football players in the class sending text messages on… Read More ›
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Wikipedia revisited
My students have had a hard time finding any errors in Wikipedia (one of their assignments). Of course there are plenty of errors in it, so why was it so hard to find them? I think the issue is that… Read More ›
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Romantic pairings: inappropriate for high school?
No, it’s not what you think. Of course there are romantic pairings in high school, and there’s no point in considering them inappropriate. But that’s not what this post is all about. The question is whether a precalculus class that’s… Read More ›
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Watch Your Back!
I recently read another funny novel by Donald Westlake, Watch Your Back!, and I can recommend it to anyone with a sense of humor. Though nominally in the thriller genre, this entrant in the Dortmunder series manages to combine convincing… Read More ›
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Once again, addressing the achievement gap
We had a day-long workshop last week on the achievement gap, which I’ve discussed in various earlier posts. What troubles all of us is that our black and Latino students (mostly from Dorchester, Roxbury, and other Boston neighborhoods) get significantly… Read More ›
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Cruciverbalism
If you have any interest at all in crossword puzzles, you will definitely enjoy Cruciverbalism: A Crossword Fanatic’s Guide to Life in the Grid, a small but well-written book by Stanley Newman and Mark Lasswell. Fascinating, amusing, and full of… Read More ›
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Arsenic and Old Lace
Arsenic and Old Lace is definitely a classic film, so that means I’m supposed to like it — right? I don’t know why I had never seen it before, but I finally got around to it the other day. Unfortunately… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 