Author Archives

Unknown's avatar

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

  • More on the miraculous iPod

    By on

    This is a follow-up to my post of September 14 concerning my student’s iPod with the picture of Jesus on its screen. First, Keith got himself interviewed by Fox News the other day and showed the iPod on camera; I… Read More ›

  • Standards-based Education, Part II

    By on

    This is a follow-up to my post of September 13. Today’s topic is also testing, but from a different POV: the use of “formative assessment”. We all know that testing has four purposes: To provide feedback, both to the teacher… Read More ›

  • A miraculous iPod

    By on

    One of my ninth-graders accidentally dropped his iPod, and the screen shattered into an image of Jesus! I told him he could probably sell it to the National Enquirer for tens of thousands of dollars, but he decided to sell… Read More ›

  • Standards-based Education, Part I

    By on

    Several years ago the entire faculty of the Weston Public Schools participated in a series of workshops on so-called Standards-based Education (SBE). There were actually a lot of good ideas in these workshops. In fact, I estimated that I had… Read More ›

  • FEMA and Internet Explorer

    By on

    Now that Michael Brown has resigned, maybe we can learn about everything else that’s wrong with FEMA. One thing that’s wrong is that FEMA requires everyone to use Internet Explorer: Hurricane Katrina victims seeking to file claims with the Federal… Read More ›

  • Showing a calculator to a group

    By on

    How do you display a calculator to a large group of people, such as a class? Simple if it’s a TI graphing calculator: just download the free Virtual TI, which displays not only the calculator screen but also the entire… Read More ›

  • The Kutztown 13

    By on

    Bruce Schneier describes the Case of the Kutztown 13: …a group of high schoolers charged with felonies for bypassing security with school-issued laptops, downloading forbidden internet goodies and using monitoring software to spy on district administrators. The students, their families,… Read More ›

  • Grade inflation?

    By on

    According to an article in this morning’s Boston Globe, the principal of Hopkinton High School has raised the grades assigned by a math teacher with 25 years of experience: Hopkinton High School teacher Rachel Bartlett appeared before the School Committee… Read More ›

  • Microsoft woes

    By on

    Our westonmath.org website looked great in Safari on Mac OS X. But then we discovered that Microsoft misinterprets much of the CSS code, so the site looked terrible in Internet Explorer on both Macintosh and Windows. Worse yet, it looked… Read More ›

  • Socially sensitive math?

    By on

    In our opening Math Department meeting, we all participated in the following activity. First we drew a two-set Venn Diagram, where one circle would contain everyone who was an oldest child in the family and one would contain everyone who… Read More ›

  • Homework

    By on

    Black-eyed Susan reports on the correlation between homework and quiz scores: So far in calculus, there have been two homework assignments and two quizzes. The students who have turned in no homework have a quiz average of 52%. The students… Read More ›

  • Late to class

    By on

    “Fed up with students routinely strolling into class well after the bell rings, high school principals across the region plan to crack down on excessive tardiness,” according to an article in today’s Boston Globe. It’s not clear to me that… Read More ›

  • How to describe a circle

    By on

    MoebiusStripper writes about MathPower 12, an all-too-popular popular high-school mathematics textbook published by McGraw-Hill. In case the student doesn’t already know what a circle is, the text provides the following explanation: The compact disc player is everywhere these days. Developed… Read More ›

  • Misunderstanding the "Law of Averages"

    By on

    An article in this morning’s Boston Globe begins like this: A Fung Wah bus, part of the low-fare passenger line fleet from Boston to New York, erupted in flames on an interstate highway in Connecticut yesterday, sending frightened passengers scrambling… Read More ›

  • Standardized tests

    By on

    In yesterday’s Boston Globe there’s an interview with Bob Sternberg, psychology professor at Yale, president of the American Psychological Association, and newly appointed dean of Arts and Sciences at Tufts. Globe correspondent Peter DeMarco asked him about the use of… Read More ›

  • Sudoku revisited

    By on

    I now think my theory about Sudoku in the Globe is wrong, or at least needs to be tweaked: IMHO yesterday’s puzzle was a lot more difficult than today’s.

  • Wikipedia

    By on

    My current favorite resource on the Internet is the Wikipedia. Considering that anybody can write and edit its entries, I am astonished that this enormous site could be not only so comprehensive but also so reliable. Of course it contains… Read More ›

  • Quicksilver

    By on

    I’m currently reading Quicksilver (William Morrow, Sept. 2003), by Neal Stephenson, previously author of The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Cryptonomicon, the last of which I should probably add to my list of favorite books. Quicksilver totals a mere 960… Read More ›

  • Doing something about stress

    By on

    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 ›

  • Math for democracy

    By on

    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 ›