Recent Posts - page 82

  • Data visualization

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    “Chartjunk?” you ask. “What’s that?” The term comes from Edward Tufte, whose work I have admired for thirty years. If you only have a small amount of time to read what he has written, I recommend the beautiful, 200 page classic, The… Read More ›

  • And God Said

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    Brandeis professor Joel Hoffman’s wonderful linguistic analysis is surprisingly readable and engaging. I recently read his full-length book, And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible’s Original Meaning, which is filled with such analysis. Normally I’m not enthusiastic about quoting other readers’ reviews… Read More ›

  • RIP, Pete Seeger, 94

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    It’s the end of an era. My three childhood heroes were Isaac Asimov, who died in 1992; Adlai Stevenson II, who died much earlier, in 1965; and Pete Seeger, who died much later…yesterday. So it took nearly half a century… Read More ›

  • Grant Wiggins and Diane Ravitch

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    It’s always difficult when you admire two different people and they’re in a bitter dispute with each other. Grant Wiggins and Diane Ravitch both have appropriate, well-thought-out views on education. But they deeply disagree on the role that teachers can… Read More ›

  • 0 for 3

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    “Sigh. I’m 0 for 3 in recent books and movies!” That’s what I said to myself after finishing a book that I had recently taken out of the library. What I meant was that I had disliked all three of… Read More ›

  • PD and edX

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    Yesterday was the fourth day of a long weekend for my students, but a professional development day for us teachers. It was surprisingly productive. As a department we constructed a list of every unit in every math course in grades… Read More ›

  • What is a proof?

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    High-school math teachers and those who know them need to be concerned with what a proof is. That certainly isn’t a new claim. But for most students a proof is something you learn to construct in high-school geometry class and… Read More ›

  • NSA, crypto, and a long project

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    Back in September I wrote a long post about a recent book written by Rafe Esquith. My second paragraph began with this observation: It wasn’t clear to me at first whether this book would have anything to offer a math… Read More ›

  • Where did ten weeks go?

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    How did I manage to go ten weeks without blogging? Just overtaken by events, I guess. But I’m determined to resume my almost-daily posts, starting today. So stay tuned, as they used to say. (Does anyone actually say “stay tuned”… Read More ›

  • Art or math?

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    What is this? Modern art? A lost work by Jackson Pollock? Actually, no. In my precalculus class this morning, we were using the Oscilloscope app on the iPad to produce real-time graphs of various musical tones. Students brought instruments into… Read More ›

  • “What's Old Is New Again”

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    Be sure to read Boris Korsunsky’s short essay in Education Week. With his usual panache, my colleague tells us that “what’s old is new again” in the world of education. This observation comes from…no, I don’t think I’ll tell you, as spoilers… Read More ›

  • Journey through Mathematics: Creative Episodes in its History

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    Original sources are key when studying the history of anything, including mathematics. Most readers, however, have neither the time nor the knowledge nor the access to be able to read original sources, so we rely on secondary works, such as Journey… Read More ›

  • Of Dice and Men

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    Of Dice and Men is a great book for those who want to geek out for a few hours. I enjoyed it tremendously. It’s a sympathetic first-person overview of everything you wanted to know about Dungeons and Dragons, written by a Forbes… Read More ›

  • The best schools?

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    The Boston Globe published a peculiar article the other day on “The top 15 high schools in Massachusetts.” It wasn’t exactly an article, being a slide show of 16 images, each with a bit of associated text. And it was… Read More ›

  • Lexicon

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    Mixed feelings here about Maxx Barry’s science fiction secret-organization thriller, Lexicon. Actually, I’m not sure that science fiction is the right genre. To the extent that linguistics and psychology are sciences, I suppose this novel counts as science fiction, but it’s pretty… Read More ›

  • iOS 7

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    As far as I’m concerned, the jury is still out on iOS 7. I’ve installed it on my iPhone and my iPad, and at this point I hate it. Well…that’s a bit too strong. But let’s say that the negatives… Read More ›

  • Finding the beauty in math

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    In Finding the Beauty in Math, Holly Korbey writes about a recent essay in the New York Times. I would love to be convinced by Korbey’s article and by the essay she cites. I really would. But unfortunately I’m not…. Read More ›

  • Calculating calories at Jake's

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    After visiting one of those railroad museums in Connecticut, Barbara and I were looking for a place to have lunch without having to drive around a lot to find a good restaurant. So we spotted Jake’s Wayback Burgers right there in… Read More ›

  • Connecticut

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    October is always a good month for traveling within New England, and this past weekend (a long weekend!) was no exception. Barbara agreed to a mini-vacation that focused on railroad museums in Connecticut, so off we went, intending to visit four… Read More ›

  • Grammar rules you can forget…according to The Guardian

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    The great science section in The Guardian is broadly conceived, sometimes including articles about math and linguistics in addition to the fields that more commonly fall under the category of “science.” Recently an article with the title “Ten grammar rules you… Read More ›