Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 56

• Stories and courses

  By ljd42 on July 13, 2019

  

  What is a course? Is it a collection of chapters? Is it a collection of topics? I hope it’s neither — especially not that collection of chapters! A course should always tell a story. It should have a unifying purpose…. Read More ›

• Stories and tests

  By ljd42 on July 7, 2019

  

  Should a math test tell a story? That’s certainly not what most people think a math test should do! Should a course tell a story? More on that tomorrow, but at least I might get a few more takers for… Read More ›

• Weston alum on treating depression

  By ljd42 on July 5, 2019

  

  One of my former Weston students has just published “Treating depression takes much more than serotonin,” a fascinating article in Popular Science. The author, Grace Huckins, class of 2012 and erstwhile co-captain of the award-winning Weston High School Math Team, has written this… Read More ›

• Greek to Me

  By ljd42 on July 3, 2019

  

  The best book of the year! Yes, I know that the year is only half over, but I’m still going to nominate Mary Norris’s Greek to Me as the best book of the year. Equal parts travelogue, memoir, mythology, and… Read More ›

• Machines Like Me

  By ljd42 on June 30, 2019

  

  What? Ian McEwan writes science fiction? News to me, but I had to give this book a chance. It’s Ian McEwan, after all. Machines Like Me falls into the alternative-history subgenre, in which the author postulates that one or more… Read More ›

• Bella Luna

  By ljd42 on June 28, 2019

  

  It may not look like much in the picture, but it sure was yummy: grilled sea scallops with fresh corn, cherry tomatoes, and peaches (that’s a peach, not an egg yolk, in the picture), all served over parsnip puree. This… Read More ›

• Virginia Woolf: “On Not Knowing Greek”

  By ljd42 on June 27, 2019

  

  What did I know about Virginia Woolf? Not much. I knew that she wrote about needing “a room of her own,” and that she had written something about a lighthouse, and I had long ago seen Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid… Read More ›

• The most commonly spoken language in your state

  By ljd42 on June 25, 2019

  

  What’s the most commonly spoken language in your state? (We’ll exclude the two obvious ones, of course — English and Spanish.) This map shows the surprising answer, at least if we trust Business Insider: Absolutely fascinating, but I’m not completely… Read More ›

• Barcelona (the restaurant, not the city)

  By ljd42 on June 24, 2019

  

  Four out of five stars, IMHO, for the Barcelona restaurant in Brookline. Barbara and I went there last night as a change of pace for our anniversary dinner. A major motivator was that we both love Barcelona, the city, and… Read More ›

• “Why Chinese is so damn hard”

  By ljd42 on June 23, 2019

  

  I just read a provocative essay by David Moser entitled “Why Chinese is so damn hard.” Is it really that hard? And are we talking about speaking Chinese or reading it? Hard compared to what? Hard for a foreigner or… Read More ›

• Not a very large fraction of the whole world

  By ljd42 on June 21, 2019

  By the way, MapLoco, someone should tell you that Puerto Rico is part of the United States and not a separate country, no what what Donald Trump thinks. Other than that (and a couple of other similar gaffes), this is… Read More ›

• Yellow Door Taqueria

  By ljd42 on June 20, 2019

  

  Barbara and I had an excellent dinner last night at Dorchester’s Yellow Door Taqueria, easily found by looking for… of course… the yellow door. I know that many people consider this a bar rather than a restaurant, but it’s successfully… Read More ›

• Untranslatable words

  By ljd42 on June 19, 2019

  

  One of the first things any article about sisu will tell you is that this Finnish word is untranslatable. (https://finland.fi/arts-culture/sisu-within-finnish-key-life-love-success/) ‘Sisu’ in Finnish means strength, perseverance in a task that for some may seem crazy to undertake, almost hopeless. (http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180502-sisu-the-finnish-art-of-inner-strength)… Read More ›

• Teacher comments by race of student

  By ljd42 on June 17, 2019

  

  Hmmm… Math teacher Bowman Dickson has gathered some statistics on the frequencies of various words used by teachers of various subjects in their report-card comments on high-school students. Here’s one of his charts: The phrase “more common” in the data above… Read More ›

• Andrew Yang

  By ljd42 on June 16, 2019

  

  It’s too bad he isn’t a very plausible candidate: look at that hat! (If you don’t recognize him, that’s Democratic candidate for president Andrew Yang.)  

• Those reviewers on Amazon are ____________ [fill in the blank]

  By ljd42 on June 15, 2019

  

  As Tom Lehrer famously said, “the reason most reviews on Amazon are so atrocious is that they were written by the people.” Actually, that’s not quite what he said. He actually said “the reason most folk songs are so atrocious is… Read More ›

• Babel

  By ljd42 on June 14, 2019

  

  Read and enjoy this book! Don’t argue: just do it. You’ll learn a lot and will have fun along the way. As the subtitle to Babel — Around the World in Twenty Languages — suggests, Dutch linguist Gaston Dorren takes us… Read More ›

• What kind of lies does he-who-shall-not-be-named tell? Bald-faced or bold-faced?

  By ljd42 on June 12, 2019

  

  “I’m starving! I haven’t been fed in days!” says William. “Just look at that face!” That’s a typical cat lie. But is it a bald-faced lie? Or even a bold-faced lie? When I was a kid, interested in both language… Read More ›

• Tones, Hmong, sounds, and spelling

  By ljd42 on June 11, 2019

  The Hmong are a well-known ethnic group, right? Well, not exactly. They’re probably not well-known to you, unless you are particularly interested in southeast Asia or happen to live in Minneapolis or Fresno, even though there are about 15 million… Read More ›

• Doing Justice

  By ljd42 on June 9, 2019

  We all know that justice is blind. “And deaf and dumb,” many a commentator has added. But what is justice, and how do we ensure that it is done? Please don’t get your knowledge of our justice system from television! Read Doing Justice: A Prosecutor’s… Read More ›

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