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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Kinsey and Me
At this point I’ve read 22 of Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone novels, starting with A is for Alibi and continuing on all the way through V is for Vengeance. This may sound extreme, but at Sue Grafton’s pace it isn’t: 22 books in 29… Read More ›
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AIME
Congratulations to the eight Weston High School students who have been invited to take the prestigious American Invitational Math Exam: seniors Ian Delaney, James Goulart, and Akshay Saini juniors William Kretschmer and Daniel Rigobon sophomore Kyle Chow freshmen Akiva Gordon and… Read More ›
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The Party
Just watched an old Peter Sellers/Blake Edwards comedy, The Party. No, wait!…1968 can’t be old! It’s just…well…apparently it’s 45 years ago, so I guess it does qualify as an “old comedy.” Anyway, it’s very funny and really well done, though it certainly… Read More ›
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A Double Thread: Growing up English and Jewish in London
In his fascinating memoir, A Double Thread: Growing Up English and Jewish in London, John Gross does exactly what the title promises: he shows how the English and Jewish cultures can intertwine and yet remain distinct. It’s important to note that… Read More ›
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Bellwether
If you know Connie Willis at all, you probably think of her as a science fiction author. I just finished reading her 1997 novel Bellwether, and indeed it was marketed as science fiction; it even was nominated for a Nebula Award!… Read More ›
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We’re adults…but sometimes we’re still in high school.
Just to put this in context, you will want to know that my friend Mark Bernstein is the Chief Scientist of Eastgate Systems, with an undergraduate degree from Swarthmore and a doctorate in chemistry from Harvard. He knew Aaron Swartz; I… Read More ›
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Transit maps TED talk!
I suppose it’s possible that you don’t share my passion for transit maps. That might be hard to believe, but I admit that it’s possible. Whether you love transit maps or not, you still need to watch Aris Ventikidis’s first-rate (and… Read More ›
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Monk
For some reason I have never watched any of the Monk television shows. But I’ve read a couple of the short stories about Adrian Monk, all written by Lee Goldberg — who was the writer of the three of the… Read More ›
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Professional development
Yesterday, while our students were enjoying their last day of a four-day weekend, it was a regular workday for teachers. Well, actually, “regular” isn’t quite the right word. We did have a full day of work, but of course there… Read More ›
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An Egyptian cartoon…not
I was just flipping through a Middle Egyptian textbook that I had bought at a used book store last year (not to be confused with a used bookstore), and I came across this cartoon drawn by an unknown previous owner… Read More ›
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Reamde
Where do I start? How do I write a post about a thousand-page epic? Clearly I can’t do it justice, so I won’t even try to write more a single paragraph. Reamde (not a typo) is a sprawling Neal Stephenson novel about massively multiplayer… Read More ›
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Douglas is so helpful.
Here’s Douglas, helping me grade geometry quizzes:
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The Universe in Zero Words
Well…not really zero words…closer to 100,000, in fact. But the main point of Dana Mackenzie’s beautiful book about beautiful mathematics is his combination of illustrations, numbers, and the equations relating those numbers to each other. Essentially, The Universe in Zero… Read More ›
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Make Just One Change
I dunno. In this book, Make Just One Change, authors Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana try passionately to make a compelling case for their view that education can be transformed by making “just one change”: teaching students “to ask their own… Read More ›
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Ladectsbeal
A few days ago, in my review of Maphead, I wrote the following: I invented my own country, Ladectsbeal, when I was 11 or 12, and pursued creating its details for several years thereafter. Maps were my primary focus there, but I… Read More ›
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The Given Day and Live by Night
Dennis Lehane is best known as a local mystery writer, but his last two books aren’t mysteries: they’re historical fiction. They loosely form the first two parts of a trilogy (actually, I’m just guessing…maybe there won’t be a third book… Read More ›
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Math Forum
We had an interesting Math Forum last night, sponsored by the PTO (which I understand is called the PTA in some states). This was an opportunity to discuss Weston’s secondary math program in an open forum. Maybe 55-60 parents attended,… Read More ›
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Do elite colleges discriminate against Asians?
Visit any suburban high school and talk to some seniors. You’ll be convinced that most of the Asian-Americans are shoo-ins for admission to elite colleges: either they’ve already been admitted or else they surely will be by April. That’s the… Read More ›
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Maphead
I mentioned a few days ago that I hadn’t yet reviewed Ken Jennings’s book, Maphead…so here we go. Unlike either Brainiac and Because I Said So, this is not really a book for a general audience. It’s not that you have to be a map geek or… Read More ›
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A double dose of algebra
An interesting article by Kalena Cortes, Joshua Goodman and Takako Nomi appeared recently in EducationNext, a right-wing magazine that comes out of Stanford’s Hoover Institute. They claim to be fair and balanced. Sound familiar? Those aren’t their words, actually, but that’s definitely their gist:… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 