Recent Posts - page 131

  • Grade inflation?

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    According to an article in this morning’s Boston Globe, the principal of Hopkinton High School has raised the grades assigned by a math teacher with 25 years of experience: Hopkinton High School teacher Rachel Bartlett appeared before the School Committee… Read More ›

  • Microsoft woes

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    Our westonmath.org website looked great in Safari on Mac OS X. But then we discovered that Microsoft misinterprets much of the CSS code, so the site looked terrible in Internet Explorer on both Macintosh and Windows. Worse yet, it looked… Read More ›

  • Socially sensitive math?

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    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 ›

  • Homework

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    Black-eyed Susan reports on the correlation between homework and quiz scores: So far in calculus, there have been two homework assignments and two quizzes. The students who have turned in no homework have a quiz average of 52%. The students… Read More ›

  • Late to class

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    “Fed up with students routinely strolling into class well after the bell rings, high school principals across the region plan to crack down on excessive tardiness,” according to an article in today’s Boston Globe. It’s not clear to me that… Read More ›

  • How to describe a circle

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    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"

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    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 ›

  • Standardized tests

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    In yesterday’s Boston Globe there’s an interview with Bob Sternberg, psychology professor at Yale, president of the American Psychological Association, and newly appointed dean of Arts and Sciences at Tufts. Globe correspondent Peter DeMarco asked him about the use of… Read More ›

  • Sudoku revisited

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    I now think my theory about Sudoku in the Globe is wrong, or at least needs to be tweaked: IMHO yesterday’s puzzle was a lot more difficult than today’s.

  • Wikipedia

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    My current favorite resource on the Internet is the Wikipedia. Considering that anybody can write and edit its entries, I am astonished that this enormous site could be not only so comprehensive but also so reliable. Of course it contains… Read More ›

  • Quicksilver

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    I’m currently reading Quicksilver (William Morrow, Sept. 2003), by Neal Stephenson, previously author of The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Cryptonomicon, the last of which I should probably add to my list of favorite books. Quicksilver totals a mere 960… Read More ›

  • Doing something about stress

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    Be sure to read Anand Vaishnav’s article, headlined “Suburban high schools try to ease up on teen stress,” in today’s Globe. My favorite paragraph quotes former Lincoln-Sudbury colleague Charlie Ruopp, now principal of Wayland High School: Wayland High School tried… Read More ›

  • Math for democracy

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    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

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    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 ›

  • It ain't fun if it's easy

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    An article in UMass Boston Magazine, Volume 9 Number 1, introduces Rick Jensen, the new head of the UMass Center for Environmental Health, Science, and Technology: Roderick (Rick) Jensen sees puzzles everwhere. When his daughter told him in second grade… Read More ›

  • Super Size Me vs. Outfoxed

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    Having recently watched both Super Size Me and Outfoxed — well, only a bit of the latter — I was wondering why I had such different reactions to these two tendentious documentaries. Super Size Me held my attention and kept… Read More ›

  • Simpson's Paradox

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    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

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    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

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    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 ›

  • Unitarians and Catholics

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    From the continuing saga of the Library Committee of the Dorchester Historical Society: I come across an issue of the First Parish Church newsletter from 1956. One page includes an annotated reproduction of an ad that the Catholic Church had… Read More ›