“Trigonometry is algebra tainted by geometry,” according to one of my students.
Math
Logarithms and the Hippocratic Oath
I just finished reading The Oath, a novel by John Lescroart. A hospital is suffering from deep financial woes. One character says: Every day the hospital’s troubles are increasing logarithmically! I guess there isn’t much that they have to worry… Read More ›
The power of visual representations
In middle- and high-school math classes, we spend a lot of time helping students learn different representations of mathematical relations: words, equations, graphs, tables, etc. One of the big ideas is that a particular representation may be more powerful than… Read More ›
Robert Noyce and Bringing Down the House
Usually I’m in the middle of reading two books at once — typically a novel and a non-fiction work. But for some reason I’m currently reading a biography that’s definitely non-fiction and a former best-seller that purports to be non-fiction…. Read More ›
Bullet voting, pro and con
On Tuesday, Boston voters will go to the polls in the “preliminary election” for City Council. Something like a primary, the preliminary election narrows each race down to a number of candidates equal to twice the number who will be… Read More ›
The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics
If you look at almost any set of modern standards for mathematics teaching — such as the NCTM’s or the Massachusetts curriculum frameworks or Weston’s own standards — you will see a prominent role for applications of mathematics. This is… Read More ›
Socially sensitive math?
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 ›
How to describe a circle
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"
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 ›
Math for democracy
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 ›
Straight as an arrow
Too many students (and too many parents, and even some teachers) view the process of learning math as a one-dimensional arrow, in which the courses come in a fixed order and lead inexorably to calculus and beyond. The most successful… Read More ›
Simpson's Paradox
Thanks to Rob Campbell, one of the Harvard students who is working with me as a teaching assistant (“mentor”) in the Crimson Summer Academy, for pointing me to this wonderful example of Simpson’s Paradox: a statistics page at SUNY Oswego… Read More ›
Simpsons math
One of the more unusual websites for us math types, simpsonsmath.com, reveals quite a few mathematical connections on The Simpsons. Check it out!
Two wonderful mathematical puzzles
I’ve recently been stretching my skills with two new mathematical puzzles, Sudoku and Planarity. Thanks to the Boston Globe and other papers, Sudoku has now become quite popular. Although the Sudoku page claims that it’s non-mathematical, these puzzles actually involve… Read More ›
Infinite pizzas
An article in this week’s Somerville Journal gives free publicity to a pizza joint in Ball Square, the Urban Gourmet: …We offer about three dozen toppings with an infinite variety of combinations. .. Wow!
Numb3rs So Far
Now that the first season of Numb3rs is in reruns, I’m finally getting around to watching this show and have seen three episodes at this point. So far, so good. I haven’t yet seen the episode referred to in the… Read More ›
Blogs in the math classroom?
Blogs are public writing. We want our students to publish their work — to take ownership of it, to take personal responsibility for it, to take pride in it. These goals apply not only to English class but also in… Read More ›
Radians
From Trigonometry for Dummies, by Mary Jane Sterling: Measuring angles in degrees is easier, but measuring angles in radians is preferable when doing computations. The radian is more exact because the radius, circumference, or area of the circle is involved…. Read More ›
Misanalyzing textbooks
The Washington Monthly publishes an interesting example of the lies about incorrect analysis of math textbooks by right-wing zealots. Not that I’m a fan of very many textbooks, but a little truth would help.
Honors math courses
Weston, of course, is really Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average®. Weston’s only public high school has just two levels of math courses: the higher level is called honors, the lower level college-prep. Everyone is above average…. Read More ›
Learning Strategies 