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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It’s a matter of fact, not a matter of opinion: it’s science!
No, I’m not going to bring up the old misguided debate about putting one or two spaces after a period. That’s because it isn’t a debate. It’s an empirical matter: do you believe the evidence, or do you want to continue… Read More ›
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Write like you talk. Or not. As the case may be.
Paul Graham has some advice for us: Here’s a simple trick for getting more people to read what you write: write in spoken language. That’s definitely not what your typical English teacher tells us. Writing and speaking are distinct and… Read More ›
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Communicating with students
Sam Shah, math teacher extraordinaire from Brooklyn, has recently written a useful post about getting information from students. Like many of us, he begins the year by asking his students to write something about themselves. In my own classes this… Read More ›
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Does a cat fit in a shoebox?
“I know I can fit into this shoebox,” says William, “but my leg and my tail aren’t cooperating and have to poke through.”
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Einstein’s Dreams
What a mystifying play! Yesterday I went to see Einstein’s Dreams at the Central Square Theater, and I wish I brought Dr. Korsunsky along so that he could have explained the physics to me. A year of honors physics in high school was… Read More ›
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No problem.
Kudos to “Miss Conduct” in today’s Boston Globe for her scientifically and morally correct answer to a reader’s question about language. A reader from East Falmouth had written in with the following question: When I thank waitstaff or some other… Read More ›
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Flowering Judas
For some reason it has been nine years since I’ve reviewed a Jane Haddam novel, despite the fact that I’ve read and enjoyed almost all of the 25 or so books in her Gregor Demarkian mystery series. Flowering Judas is the most recent;… Read More ›
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We’ve discussed this before, but…
…I can’t resist returning to the topic. You know what I mean. Please read the entire post in today’s Math with Bad Drawings. It won’t take you long. Then, as an exercise for the reader, think about two of the drawings in… Read More ›
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“All students are expected to attend detention.”
Announcement I just noticed on the school’s closed-circuit TV: “All students are expected to attend detention.” Hmmm….
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Cut scores: What are they, and why do we care?
“Cut scores”? That certainly sounds like esoteric jargon, doesn’t it? But it turns out to be an important concept, even if the general public doesn’t know the phrase. Whenever we scale a test to convert raw scores to scaled scores, we… Read More ›
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Accents come from _______
One of the many things that math teachers and linguists have in common is that we are usually misunderstood by the general public. The great David Crystal has written an excellent piece on this subject in the context of being interviewed for an… Read More ›
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Linguistics blogs
So here’s the dilemma, and it’s not an unusual one in the Internet of the current decade. Suppose you’re interested in linguistics, but you can’t devote your whole life to it. Your dilemma is that either you can pick two or… Read More ›
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Extreme photojournalism
Famed New York Times/freelance photojournalist Lynsey Addario gave an intense presentation to students and faculty of Weston High School yesterday afternoon. “Intense” is definitely the word. Never before have I heard eight hundred high-school students sit so quietly and attentively for… Read More ›
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How do you organize a binder?
Let’s suppose you have to keep a physical notebook (or binder) for a course you’re taking (or teaching, for that matter). Most people seem to prefer using tabs to give themselves the illusion of organization (oops — that shows my… Read More ›
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“I can’t do math!”
In its essence this is a familiar story, but it bears reexamination. We’ll end with the Indian girl who gave up on math at age 15, but we start with the observation that American and Indian kids alike classify themselves… Read More ›
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Yay! (maybe)
Good news and bad news here. The good news is that the Obama Administration seems to have softened its stand on mandatory standardized testing, which has resulted in vastly excessive time spent in many schools and totally inappropriate teacher evaluation… Read More ›
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JEB @PA
They tell us that students should get to know their teachers. So, every year I show my classes excerpts from Kevin Rafferty’s movie, Regular Guys. This is partly so that my students can get a better picture of my own high-school experience and partly… Read More ›
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Marauder’s Map
Harry would be jealous. Look at this: it’s a real-life Marauder’s Map! But instead of showing where people are, it shows where MBTA subway trains are — right now, in real time. How cool is that?
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Rails across Canada?
For the second time, Barbara and I are planning to take the train from Boston to Chicago this April to visit the in-laws…and to enjoy the journey, of course. But that’s less than half the distance across the continent. At… Read More ›
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The so-called Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
What an annoying book! How did it become a New York Times best-seller??? In the words of H.L. Mencken, “no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people,” so maybe that’s the explanation. In The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 