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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Really? You’re saying Ranked Choice Voting is too hard for adults in Massachusetts?
My former Quantitative Reasoning (QR) students know that Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) is superior to First Past the Post (FPTP), the system we use in Massachusetts for most elections. So why did Massachusetts adults vote it down by a convincing… Read More ›
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Is it easy to teach an interactive map class online?
Nine months ago I wrote about a mapping workshop at the Boston Public Library. That was before the pandemic, even if it feels like the pandemic has been going on for a couple of years now. Why, you may ask,… Read More ›
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The true name of the bear (in XKCD, not Vernor Vinge)
True names are important: if somebody knows your true name, they have power over you. I’m not talking about Vernor Vinge’s important novella, True Names, although there is definitely a strong connection with it. Many contributors to social media, as we know,… Read More ›
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Hexagonal squares???
Taking a much-needed break from watching the nail-biting election returns, we will consider hexagonal squares. “No such thing,” you say, since you are a knowledgeable geometer. I first saw the phrase “hexagonal squares” when I was 13 or 14, reading… Read More ›
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Science fiction? Greek mythology? Philosophy? All in Jo Walton’s The Philosopher Kings
Three months ago I reviewed Jo Walton’s The Just City. Recently I finished reading the sequel, The Philosopher Kings, which is equally fascinating and equally worth reading. “We don’t know when we are,” as one character remarks. When, not where. The gods live “outside… Read More ›
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What’s wrong with spelling reform anyway? And what about the Shaw Alphabet?
I’ve heard that there are some people who think that English spelling is difficult. In fact, I think I know a couple of them. But nobody has to spend years learning how to spell Spanish words, so why do we… Read More ›
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I am the very model of…
No, I’m not talking about Tom Lehrer’s famous song, “The Elements,” nor about n–2 others of the n parodies of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Major General’s song, where n must be a large number. I’m talking about “I Am the very Model of a Biblical… Read More ›
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Who remembers diagramming sentences? And what does it have to do with Facebook? And the Supreme Court?
Who remembers diagramming sentences? I do, I do! If you’re my age, you never forget the experience of diagramming sentences. Love it or hate it (I was one of the few who loved it), you don’t forget it. Maybe you forget… Read More ›
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Just Thai
Barbara and I had a yummy take-out dinner last night from the new Thai restaurant in Fields Corner, Just Thai: chicken wings with ginger glaze, ground peanuts, and scallion; spring rolls; scallion pancakes; Tom Yum soup; shrimp pad thai; and broccoli… Read More ›
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Will he go?
Will he go? Of course he will! We hope. He says he’s “not sure” that he will accept the results. I have just finished reading the short but vital book by Lawrence Douglas with the full title of Will He Go?… Read More ›
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It’s pronounced “GIF”!
That headline isn’t very helpful, as you have no doubt figured out. After all, it’s spelled “GIF,” but it’s pronounced with a hard G as in “gift” — or perhaps with a soft G as in “giraffe.” But which? You probably know the answer…… Read More ›
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What’s so special about the Mandelbrot Set?
Nobody tires of Mandelbrot Set images, especially the zoomed-in ones. But there aren’t very many non-mathematicians who can explain them — though I hope my former Precalculus students can do so. For everyone else, you really need to watch a… Read More ›
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Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra… and Gavagai… and intertextuality!
Hmmm… how can you communicate with someone when the two of you have no language in common? In linguistics this has been a major conundrum, especially in earlier centuries when there was no worldwide communication; in science fiction it has… Read More ›
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Does he fit?
William thinks he fits in this box. William is wrong.
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Is this really what (male) math professors are like?
The philosophers in the program were kind and excellent teachers, but the math professors I met in those days were somewhat less skilled at teaching or relating to people. One told us that we should think of him as a… Read More ›
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How do I know that they know?
What do we lose by teaching remotely? Here is another follow-up inspired by Patrick Honner in this age of COVID. Honner makes the following important observation: When I taught the IVT last week, I couldn’t walk around class and look… Read More ›
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The Answer is… “Who is Alex Trebek?”
No, the title of this post is not the title of a book, despite the italics. More specifically, it’s not the title of a book: it’s a portmanteau of the titles of two books: The Answer is… (by Alex Trebek) Who is… Read More ›
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National Museum of Math: new comments
What’s wrong with the National Museum of Math??? A lot, apparently, including race and class discrimination as well as horrible management policies. I wrote a mixed review of this museum last year. I had observed that a lot of the… Read More ›
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Beyond my control?
There’s a minimalism to teaching and learning math that I’ve always loved. With just a pencil and paper I can become a mathematician. With just one good question I can launch a math class. But now there’s a lot more… Read More ›
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Who invented the newspaper?
It’s all blurred these days: news, fake news, opinion, print, Internet, newspapers, magazines… Do we even know what’s a newspaper and what isn’t? As newspapers keep dying, do people care who invented them in the first place? I do. Or… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 