Recent Posts - page 116

  • 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 ›

  • Dorchester: 1630-1870

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    It often happens that an event at the Dorchester Historical Society (DHS) is an informative experience. And it often happens that a DHS event is an enjoyable experience. Today’s presentation by Earl Taylor and John Goff was both. The title… Read More ›

  • WoW and Second Life: follow-up

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    This is a follow-up to my earlier post on Second Life (SL) vs. World of Warcraft (WoW). One of my students, Dan Spector, replies to that post by writing the following remarks in an email message to me (quoted by… Read More ›

  • Modified open campus — a solution to tardiness, or would it make it worse?

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    We have a problem at Weston High School. Actually, we have more than one — but there’s one problem I want to write about here: every day we have an extraordinary number of students coming late to school and/or late… Read More ›

  • High-school dropout = criminal?

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    Last night, Emily Rooney’s Greater Boston included a segment on truancy in the Boston public schools. One of her guests, Suffolk County Sheriff Andrea Cabral, whom I usually admire and respect, claimed that 50% of high-school dropouts (from Boston public… Read More ›

  • Unlucky in Law

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    I have a mixed reaction to Unlucky in Law, by Perri O’Shaughnessy. It’s a decent enough legal mystery, more-or-less in the John Grisham or Scott Turow vein. And it has an undeniably interesting plot, involving the Russian-American community in Monterey…. Read More ›

  • Irrationality

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    Rudbeckia Hirta reports that her college students have trouble understanding irrational numbers: Most of my students felt that 3 * sqrt(2) / 5 * sqrt(2) was irrational because of the sqrt(2). They didn’t remember that you can “cancel” (hate that… Read More ›