Recent Posts - page 115

  • Pi (not π)

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    I just finished reading Life of Pi, the intriguing novel by Yann Martel. (I owe thanks to my colleague, Donna Gonzalez, for not only recommending this book but also lending her copy to me.) Just to get one thing straight… Read More ›

  • Dorchester described accurately

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    I know, it shouldn’t be news when a major publication describes Dorchester accurately. It should be the dog-bites-man vs. man-bites-dog thing. But, unfortunately, accurate yet positive descriptions of Dorchester have come to be man-bites-dog stories in the mainstream press. Then… Read More ›

  • Average grades

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    What should an average grade be? This question actually has two very different but intertwingled meanings. Some people, when they ask it, are wondering whether the mean (or perhaps median) grade in a school/department/course should be a B or a… Read More ›

  • Being visited by scary reviewers

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    No, they weren’t actually scary. That’s merely what one of my students thought. “Weren’t you scared?” she asked. Each department in the Weston Public Schools gets reviewed every ten years or so. This year it was the Math Department’s turn…. Read More ›

  • Art Day

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    The first Wednesday of (almost) every month is professional development day in the Weston Public Schools. Students have a half-day of classes, after which they can go home and the faculty have workshops and the like. Usually these days have… Read More ›

  • Singulars and plurals

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    I am catching up on reading old posts in Tenser, said the Tensor, which labels itself as “the blog of a graduate student in linguistics. It’s about language, science fiction, computers and technology, comics, anime, and other geekery.” How could… Read More ›

  • Math education: an inconvenient truth

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    It’s hard to know where to begin. What’s wrong with the video “Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth, ” which is primarily an attack on TERC’s Investigations in Number, Data, and Space and other standards-based curricula? Well, let me count the… Read More ›

  • Blood from a Stone

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    I recommend Blood from a Stone, by Donna Leon. If you look at the photo on the opening screen of her website, you’ll immediately see what I liked most about this novel: it makes the reader feel that s/he’s in… Read More ›

  • Ethnomathematics

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    We have recently been discussing ethnomathematics in the context of Weston’s global awareness emphasis. Here are some thoughts on this subject: It’s worth studying number systems other than our own familiar Hindu-Arabic one. Years ago I developed quite a number… Read More ›

  • The Outlier Effect

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    Just came back from seeing The Outlier Effect, a one-act play written and performed by Weston High School’s Theater Company. That’s right: not only performed by them, but also written by them. Collaboration by a mere two authors is difficult… Read More ›

  • What should college freshmen know?

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    Rudbeckia Hirta reports that she has a “freakishly competent” college calculus class: They come to class; most of them do the assigned work; they earn high scores on the assessments. Whether that situation should be so surprising is another story,… Read More ›

  • Why does 17/1000 of an inch matter?

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    In HO scale model railroading, tracks always used to have rails that are 0.100 inches high, even though that’s not strictly to scale. Many model railroaders — mostly those who interpret the word “model” strictly — favor the newer versions,… Read More ›

  • NJ Seeds

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    I’ve written posts about the Crimson Summer Academy on two earlier occasions: August 20, 2006, and May 23, 2005. Now I’m designing a math curriculum for a program with a somewhat similar basis in New Jersey: the College Prep Program… Read More ›

  • Getting Things Done Revisited

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    Slightly over a year ago, I wrote a post about Getting Things Done (GTD) — how it seemed to me to be “the right thing” and yet I couldn’t make myself actually implement it. In the intervening 13 months I… Read More ›

  • Prince of Thieves

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    I just finished listening to the audiobook version of Prince of Thieves, a crime thriller written by Chuck Hogan and read by Dorchester’s own Donnie Wahlberg. The action takes place in Charlestown, and the sense of place is definitely the… Read More ›

  • Urban schools success stories? Or not?

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    So here’s the question. Why does everyone like to hear success stories from inner-city, overwhelming minority public schools? I suppose Democrats like to hear these stories because it confirms their beliefs that non-whites without money can be academically successful, and… Read More ›

  • Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog

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    How could I resist reading a blog entitled “Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog”? Yes, as you guessed, it turns out to be a blog that’s entirely written in Middle English! Anyway, take a look at it and make a serious… Read More ›

  • The Coffee Trader

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    I recently finished reading a fascinating historical novel by David Liss, The Coffee Trader. Now maybe you’re not interested in the formation of the coffee trade in Europe in the 17th Century — though I can’t imagine why not —… Read More ›

  • Big ideas

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    LCSI’s new blog, Thinkering, links to Seymour Papert’s homepage, which in turn links to a four-and-a-half-year-old press release from MIT, which reminded me of our commitment to big ideas in the Math Department of the Weston Public Schools. Such are… Read More ›

  • The Mexican Consulate puzzle (and cell phone cameras)

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    Ate lunch today at the Blue Fin, a favorite inexpensive Japanese restaurant in Little Tokyo, a.k.a. the Porter Exchange Building in Cambridge. A new sign lists the types of identification that are acceptable for ordering alcoholic beverages — mostly the… Read More ›