Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 43

• Just Thai

  By ljd42 on October 26, 2020

  

  Barbara and I had a yummy take-out dinner last night from the new Thai restaurant in Fields Corner, Just Thai: chicken wings with ginger glaze, ground peanuts, and scallion; spring rolls; scallion pancakes; Tom Yum soup; shrimp pad thai; and broccoli… Read More ›

• Will he go?

  By ljd42 on October 25, 2020

  

  Will he go? Of course he will! We hope. He says he’s “not sure” that he will accept the results. I have just finished reading the short but vital book by Lawrence Douglas with the full title of Will He Go?… Read More ›

• It’s pronounced “GIF”!

  By ljd42 on October 24, 2020

  

  That headline isn’t very helpful, as you have no doubt figured out. After all, it’s spelled “GIF,” but it’s pronounced with a hard G as in “gift” — or perhaps with a soft G as in “giraffe.” But which? You probably know the answer…… Read More ›

• What’s so special about the Mandelbrot Set?

  By ljd42 on October 22, 2020

  

  Nobody tires of Mandelbrot Set images, especially the zoomed-in ones. But there aren’t very many non-mathematicians who can explain them — though I hope my former Precalculus students can do so. For everyone else, you really need to watch a… Read More ›

• Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra… and Gavagai… and intertextuality!

  By ljd42 on October 21, 2020

  

  Hmmm… how can you communicate with someone when the two of you have no language in common? In linguistics this has been a major conundrum, especially in earlier centuries when there was no worldwide communication; in science fiction it has… Read More ›

• Does he fit?

  By ljd42 on October 19, 2020

  

  William thinks he fits in this box. William is wrong.

• Is this really what (male) math professors are like?

  By ljd42 on October 18, 2020

  

  The philosophers in the program were kind and excellent teachers, but the math professors I met in those days were somewhat less skilled at teaching or relating to people. One told us that we should think of him as a… Read More ›

• How do I know that they know?

  By ljd42 on October 17, 2020

  

  What do we lose by teaching remotely? Here is another follow-up inspired by Patrick Honner in this age of COVID. Honner makes the following important observation: When I taught the IVT last week, I couldn’t walk around class and look… Read More ›

• The Answer is… “Who is Alex Trebek?”

  By ljd42 on October 16, 2020

  

  No, the title of this post is not the title of a book, despite the italics. More specifically, it’s not the title of a book: it’s a portmanteau of the titles of two books: The Answer is… (by Alex Trebek) Who is… Read More ›

• National Museum of Math: new comments

  By ljd42 on October 14, 2020

  

  What’s wrong with the National Museum of Math??? A lot, apparently, including race and class discrimination as well as horrible management policies. I wrote a mixed review of this museum last year. I had observed that a lot of the… Read More ›

• Beyond my control?

  By ljd42 on October 13, 2020

  

  There’s a minimalism to teaching and learning math that I’ve always loved. With just a pencil and paper I can become a mathematician. With just one good question I can launch a math class. But now there’s a lot more… Read More ›

• Who invented the newspaper?

  By ljd42 on October 12, 2020

  

  It’s all blurred these days: news, fake news, opinion, print, Internet, newspapers, magazines… Do we even know what’s a newspaper and what isn’t? As newspapers keep dying, do people care who invented them in the first place? I do. Or… Read More ›

• You’re Fired! (We can hope.)

  By ljd42 on October 10, 2020

  

  You’re Fired: The Perfect Guide to Beating Donald Trump. That’s the full title. It’s partially successful at fulfilling its subtitle. I give it a B+. This is an often amusing and always fairly quick read despite the 61 pages of endnotes!… Read More ›

• Popularizers V: Raymond Smullyan

  By ljd42 on October 8, 2020

  

  A very special island is inhabited only by knights and knaves. Knights always tell the truth, and knaves always lie. You meet two inhabitants: Zoey and Mel. Zoey tells you that Mel is a knave. Mel says, “Neither Zoey nor I… Read More ›

• International Translation Day (OK, OK, so I’m a few days late)

  By ljd42 on October 6, 2020

  

  Why is a lion a typical translator’s pet? That’s surely your first question on looking at the image that accompanies a post titled Koran dankon, tradukistoj, by the great Gaston Dorren, who posts all too infrequently. (In case that sentence is… Read More ›

• (Yawn. It’s so early in the morning.) What do all these people have in common?

  By ljd42 on October 4, 2020

  

  Tim Cook, Richard Branson, Benjamin Franklin, Rachel Ray, Napoleon Bonaparte, Ernest Hemingway, and Michelle Obama: what do these seven people have in common? Or is it too early in the morning for you? The answer to the first question, according to… Read More ›

• Webinar vs. debate: Supervising in an age of COVID

  By ljd42 on October 2, 2020

  

  “At least,” I figured, “this webinar will surely be better than Tuesday’s debate.” Low bar, I know. (I had watched half of the debate before I couldn’t stand it any longer.) What I am referring to definitely surpassed that low… Read More ›

• You’re Wearing That?

  By ljd42 on September 30, 2020

  

  I’ve never been a mother. I’ve never been a daughter. So why would I want to read You’re Wearing That?, which bears the subtitle Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation? Two reasons: The author is Deborah Tannen, as shown above the title. Tannen, if… Read More ›

• Scots (the language, not the people) (not to be confused with Gaelic, nor with Ulster-Scots, nor with Scottish English)

  By ljd42 on September 28, 2020

  

  The Scots language has been in the news! Until a few years ago I didn’t even know what Scots is. Do you? If you’ve read my post of August 15, you do. Otherwise there’s a good chance that you don’t know, or… Read More ›

• Is it fantasy? Or is it science fiction? Some ruminations.

  By ljd42 on September 26, 2020

  

  Do we care about labeling a literary genre? What difference does it make? Ever since I was a pre-teen, I was interested in science fiction. Fantasy, not so much. But what’s the difference? And who cares? First of all, just… Read More ›

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