Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 78

• Fantasy Internships

  By ljd42 on September 6, 2015

  For the second year in a row, our college-prep Algebra II classes are all doing a year-long applied math project centering on cryptography, which has long been one of the four units in our Algebra II curriculum. This project is… Read More ›

• Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away

  By ljd42 on September 5, 2015

  Plato! Google! What a combination! Philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein imagines what would happen if Plato were somehow still alive and were visiting Google, being interviewed on talk shows, etc. This premise, of course, requires a certain suspension of disbelief,… Read More ›

• Seveneves

  By ljd42 on September 3, 2015

  Another fine novel from the great Neal Stephenson! Though not by any means his best, Seveneves is still a five-star story. Go read it. At only 880 pages, you’ll be able to finish it in a day or two. Well…no. It really… Read More ›

• What Language is: And What it isn’t and What it Could Be

  By ljd42 on September 1, 2015

  Sometimes people ask me to recommend a good book on linguistics for the general reader — not a textbook, not a technical treatise, just an informative (and accurate) explanation of what linguistics is all about. I’ve never quite been sure… Read More ›

• Attributes of a good mathematician

  By ljd42 on August 30, 2015

  In a Professional Development activity a couple of years ago, we brainstormed the “attributes of a good mathematician.” These were supposed to be the characteristics that a successful math student should be developing, so we started thinking about how to… Read More ›

• You Are Not Special

  By ljd42 on August 25, 2015

  You’ve probably heard about David McCullough Jr.’s much-publicized graduation speech at Wellesley High School back in 2012. Perhaps you even saw it on YouTube. Perhaps you read the book by the same title. Perhaps you were even there in person. In… Read More ›

• The Berkshires: Mostly museums

  By ljd42 on August 23, 2015

  

  Barbara and I have just returned from a mini-vacation, which we were able to squeeze in between the end of Crimson Summer Academy and the beginning of workshops for Weston High School. We decided we would spend three days in… Read More ›

• Ace Atkins as Robert Parker

  By ljd42 on August 21, 2015

  Reading Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels is a guilty pleasure. The Boston and Cambridge locales are spot on, the dialog is snappy, and most of the plots are entertaining. Or perhaps I should say it was a guilty pleasure, as Parker died… Read More ›

• Pixar: Transformations and mathematical models at the Museum of Science

  By ljd42 on August 19, 2015

  

  Pixar? Math? What a combination! When I wrote about what I learned at the NCTM Annual Meeting back in April, I observed that geometric transformations and mathematical models were common themes at that conference. Transformations seem fairly abstract, even if… Read More ›

• The new Boston Public Market

  By ljd42 on August 17, 2015

  The new Boston Public Market opened a couple of weeks ago to much fanfare. Along with a lot of positive publicity, there were some vocal critics, so I had to check it out. This isn’t the kind of farm stand… Read More ›

• It's just so much work being a cat all day…

  By ljd42 on August 16, 2015

  

• Missing the point?

  By ljd42 on August 15, 2015

  As you know, the devil is in the details. Details, you say? Well, the Math Curmudgeon is always worth reading…but I often disagree with him, most especially with some of his details. Consider his post “Missing the Point,” which deals primarily… Read More ›

• Temari balls

  By ljd42 on August 14, 2015

  

  We traditionally cap off Honors Geometry by ending the course with a brief exploration of non-Euclidean geometries. In recent years we have focused on geometry on the surface of a sphere; we ask freshmen to pretend that they are living on… Read More ›

• Sea Breeze revisited

  By ljd42 on August 12, 2015

  Just over four years ago, I favorably reviewed the Sea Breeze Mexican Grill, which had just opened in our neighborhood. This restaurant chugged along for a while, being an adequate neighborhood restaurant but nothing special. My initial enthusiasm began to wane…. Read More ›

• How science and math see each other

  By ljd42 on August 10, 2015

  Ben does it again! We’re back to Math with Bad Drawings, with another post that resonates deeply with me as a math teacher. It begins with the somewhat startling claim that “mathematicians and scientists don’t share all that much in common.” How… Read More ›

• The Cats: a photo-essay

  By ljd42 on August 8, 2015

  Back in March…and April…and May…a group of freshmen kept pestering me (nicely, of course) to write a photo-essay about my cats, so I finally gave into the pressure and wrote one. Just follow this link.

• Oliver Sacks

  By ljd42 on August 7, 2015

  I’ve long been an admirer of Oliver Sacks — see, for instance, my post on Musicophilia — but it was his recent announcement that he is fatally ill that led me to want to read more than just that book… Read More ›

• Reactions to the NCTM Annual Meeting

  By ljd42 on August 6, 2015

  Fortunately I didn’t write this report just now! (I wrote it at the end of April, right after the NCTM meeting. I never would have remembered all these details if I had waited three and a half months.) Just follow… Read More ›

• A return to blogging

  By ljd42 on August 5, 2015

  So…how long has it been since I blogged? Almost a year? Well, ten months anyway, which is far too long a hiatus. So I’m resuming as of today. I am hoping for at least four posts a week, and probably… Read More ›

• Delvyn Case explains the Beatles.

  By ljd42 on October 20, 2014

  Music professor and composer Delvyn Case gave a refreshing and informative talk yesterday afternoon about the music of the Beatles. The talk, of course, was part of the Dorchester Historical Society’s lecture series. Of course. What do I hear you… Read More ›

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