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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“Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.”
You’ve always wanted to learn the truth about the interaction between numbers and names, haven’t you? James Propp will be your teacher. In this month’s Mathematical Enrichments, he makes this observation: Poincaré once wrote “Mathematics is the art of giving… Read More ›
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Monopoly
Of course I played Monopoly a fair amount as a preteen, teen, and young adult. I even played it a bit as a not-so-young adult. The political implications were never in the front of my mind—except for the one summer… Read More ›
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More Bones
Why do I continue reading Kathy Reichs’s Temperance Brennan novels? Because I enjoy them, of course! They hold my attention; I like the geeky details of the forensics; and I’m always interested in the character development through the series. Cold… Read More ›
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Do we still think it can’t happen here?
Ron DeSantis wants to tell me what to teach. And what not to teach. Even though he has broken with Donald Trump, he is following in the Trumpian footsteps. Maybe it’s only half of current Republicans who have authoritarian impulses,… Read More ›
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Ginnels, jitties, snickets, and twitchels
We’ve all had this experience. You hear or read an unusual word that’s completely new to you—and then, a day or so later, you hear or read it again! Is it a coincidence? It just happened to me with the… Read More ›
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Keep your language!
Over 97% of Americans are either immigrants or descendants of immigrants—even if some so-called conservatives don’t want to admit it. But many of us who grew up with immigrant parents or grandparents are unable to speak or read the language(s)… Read More ›
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Happy ἐξελαύνω Day!
This is my not-quite-annual “march forth” post wishing everyone a happy Exelauno Day. In case you’ve forgotten, here is my post from a year ago, which happens to be mostly about learning Ukrainian (!) but opens with remarks about Exelauno… Read More ›
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Can you own a plot?
“Not another story-within-a-story!” said I to myself, said I. Why am I suddenly reading so many novels with that particular structure? Must be something in the water: a plot by some nefarious organization. By this point you’ve realized that it’s… Read More ›
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Popular culture, math, and computer science
This puzzle comes from mathematical physicist John Baez. That’s John, not Joan (she is not a mathematical physicist, as far as I know), though they are in fact first cousins. You don’t normally expect that a physicist with a Ph.D…. Read More ›
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S&W
That stands for Smith and W… …Relax: the W doesn’t stand for Wesson! It stands for Wollensky, of course. Normally Barbara and I would never go to such a high-end restaurant, but this was a special occasion. We had dinner… Read More ›
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What’s so beautiful about algebra?
“Nothing,” say some of my students. “You can always find the value of x,” say some others. “It’s useful in real life,” says one. “No it isn’t!” says another. By this point we’ve moved far afield from the original question…. Read More ›
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William wins Cutest Cat of the Day award!
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It can’t happen here. (Or can it?)
What took me so long? I have finally finished reading Jo Walton’s 2006 alternative history novel, Farthing, subtitled A Story of a World that Could Have Been, Volume I of the Small Change trilogy. Walton has written two of my… Read More ›
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No, APL doesn’t stand for “Alison, Phil, and Larry.”
Let’s suppose your unimaginative instructor gave you this task: add up all the whole numbers from 1 through 42. You have, of course, several options: Or, if your language of choice is APL, you could simply write a one-line program… Read More ›
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Ὁ Ἡρóδοτος: A beautiful new edition (in English, not Greek)
Can you name three or four ancient world historians? I don’t mean modern writers who study the history of the ancient world; I mean writers who lived in the ancient world and wrote about the history of their time and… Read More ›
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What grade should these get?
We continue to hear concerns about Artificial Intelligence, especially ChatGPT, nearly every day. As the link in the previous paragraph will take you to my second post about ChatGPT, this must be the third, and I really don’t want to… Read More ›
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Globle
Following in the recent tradition of Wordle and its many spinoffs, Globle is an online game that will let you test your knowledge of geography in an unconventional format. The instructions are simple. First your opponent (the computer) picks a… Read More ›
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The Next Generation
The Next Generation. No, not Star Trek—we’re talking America’s Test Kitchen: The Next Generation on Amazon FreeVee. Normally I don’t like cooking competitions. But I continued to watch all ten episodes of this competition because of my love for the… Read More ›
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Ça va bien aller.
It’s going to be all right, as they say (in Quebecois French) in this novel. After a long wait caused by so many other library patrons, I finally had a chance to read A World of Curiosities, the latest Three… Read More ›
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A known unknown? Or maybe it’s an unknown known? Or what?
You do remember Donald Rumsfeld, don’t you? Famous (or infamous) for many things, including the distinction between known unknowns and unknown unknowns, not to mention known knowns and unknown knowns. Confused yet? James Harbeck—whom I’ve cited a dozen times in… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 