Recent Posts - page 133

  • Stunning graphs of equations

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    You have got to go look at the Visual Dictionary of Famous Plane Curves and study some of the stunning images that Xah Lee has collected. I particularly recommend his collection of sinusoids and his gallery of graphics based on… Read More ›

  • Beware the Algebrator

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    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

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    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?

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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 ›

  • Numb3rs

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    Please read Graham Cormode’s review of the TV show, “Numb3rs” (which he claims is pronounced “Numbthreers” rather than “Numbers”). Brief excerpt: Given low initial expectations, it was probably one of the better attempts to show mathematical topics within the context… Read More ›

  • Literature & math: imaginary gardens with real toads

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    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

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    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 ›

  • Don’t confuse England with Britain

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    Perhaps a Venn Diagram would help.

  • Statistics for kids

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    Do check out the NCES Students’ Classroom site. Good stuff — even though a lot of it is in Comic Sans (see yesterday’s post).

  • Ban Comic Sans!

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    In a column in this week’s Boston Phoenix, Mike Miliard reports on the worldwide campaign by Dave and Holly Combs to ban the Comic Sans font: …It’s Comic Sans, the goofy, ungainly typeface, meant to mimic handwriting that’s somehow proliferated… Read More ›

  • Another gender difference?

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    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

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    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

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    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…

  • Chris Lydon redux

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    Yesterday Christopher Lydon returned to NPR with his new show/blog called Open Source. Day #2 concluded a few minutes ago. Actually, of course, it was only the broadcast portion that concluded a few minutes ago. The Internet portion — the… Read More ›

  • An argument from continuity

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    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 ›

  • Intel, security, and Apple

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    Paul Otellini, the new CEO of Intel, says that he “spends an hour a weekend removing spyware from his daughter’s computer,” according to a Wall Street Journal article about its recent All Things Digital conference. When asked whether a computer… Read More ›

  • The new SAT

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    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 ›