This note, written by a junior, was attached to the precalculus book she was returning: Dear Mr. Davidson, Here is my book. I have enjoyed it thoroughly. I read it when I was feeling down, and it raised my spirits…. Read More ›
Teaching & Learning
Life after exams
It’s tough to keep kids focused and engaged after they’ve finished their final exams. As I blogged earlier, our math exams were on the 14th… but school continues until the 23rd! Everyone knows that tests and grades are all that… Read More ›
Beware the Algebrator
Yes, there really is a product called The Algebrator. Their slogan is, “You Type in Your Homework Problem. Algebrator does the Rest!” Here is an excerpt from one of their ads. What’s wrong with this picture?
Too hot to think
It wasn’t a great day for taking math exams. I opened up the windows and doors in my classroom at 7 AM to get some cross-ventilation, but when the exam started at 7:35 it was already 83 degrees in my… Read More ›
Amusing calculus book?
The pseudonymous Rudbeckia Hirta writes about “the most amusing book ever written about calculus”: The Historical Development of the Calculus, by C.H. Edwards. I know, you don’t think the competition for most amusing calculus book is very stiff, but I’m… Read More ›
The TeachScheme conference
The TeachScheme conference (see my post of 5/22) went very well. Because of some changes in the program, we actually were granted 15 minutes for our talk! I came away with quite a number of interesting ideas, both for the… Read More ›
Representations
Dennis and I were talking about multiple representations. Multiple representations are one of the Big Ideas that wend their way through all our math courses. A table and a graph and a function machine and a mapping diagram are all… Read More ›
Awards
Is Weston High School the only school that gives out too many awards? Probably not. I counted 14 awards for one of our seniors, and 14 for another as well! And, of course, there were hundreds of others for seniors…. Read More ›
Literature & math: imaginary gardens with real toads
This week’s New York Times Book Review contains a fascinating Literary Map of Manhattan, preceded by an explanatory article written by Ethicist Randy Cohen. Quoting Meg Wolitzer, Cohen defines his (their?) “cartographic motto”: a strong sense of specificity, even though… Read More ›
What math has taught him
Sam Hughes is the author of the Venn Diagram cited in my previous post. I also recommend his list of “Things mathematics has taught me”: That there are such things as unanswerable questions — indeed, provably unanswerable questions That Occam’s… Read More ›
Statistics for kids
Do check out the NCES Students’ Classroom site. Good stuff — even though a lot of it is in Comic Sans (see yesterday’s post).
Another gender difference?
My impression is that there are significantly more female teen bloggers than male ones, but maybe I’m wrong. A fascinating study by David Huffaker says that “BlogCensus randomly sampled 490,000 blogs to find 40% male and 36% female, with the… Read More ›
Homework considered harmful
Homework can be counterproductive, according to an article on the physorg.com website. Here are a few excerpts: Instead of improving educational achievement in countries around the world, increases in homework may actually undercut teaching effectiveness and worsen disparities in student… Read More ›
Building learning communities
A conference on Building Learning Communities — right here in Weston! I don’t know much about it, but it’s led by Wellesley’s distinguished former tech coordinator, Alan November, and the blurb looks interesting. Stay tuned for more info…
An argument from continuity
Two sophomores approached my colleague Josh with a question: “How can we construct a fair 5-sided die?” Josh posed a prior question: Is it even possible to construct such a die? He fashioned an interesting argument from continuity: Consider two… Read More ›
The new SAT
An interesting column by Mark Franek concerning the writing section of the new SAT includes the following observation: The writing section is entirely new — 70 percent of it is composed of pesky multiple-choice grammatical questions (where students aren’t writing… Read More ›
The view from college math
Rudbeckia Hirta (a clever pseudonym for a math professor who carefully keeps her true identity hidden) observes: Due to reasons beyond my understanding, high school math and college math are completely unaligned. The K-12 system sends us students whose knowledge… Read More ›
Where visuals fail
Some of us couldn’t possibly forget the 1969 draft lottery, the new and supposedly “fair” system to pick who was going to be sent to Vietnam. My Algebra 2 class is studying probability and was remarkably interested in learning about… Read More ›
Don’t do this
From this morning’s Boston Globe: A public school teacher fed up with his students’ behavior found a way to berate them in the context of a class assignment. The Jefferson Parish teacher wrote and distributed a two-page essay to his… Read More ›
Do department names matter?
As in most high schools, computer science courses at Weston High School are taught under the aegis of the Math Department. (One of the first exceptions to this rule was Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, where we spun off a separate… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 