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# Posts

### October 23, 2014

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Have you heard about the new app called PhotoMath?  You can scan over an equation and the app will solve it for you... it will even show the steps in solving!I added the free app to an iPad that we have available at school, grabbed an Algebra 2 book, and tried it out.  My observations:1. The app doesn't support hand-written equations. So that takes out the option for the kids to scan their homework. (A teacher here discovered that it won't scan a computer screen either, which removes […]
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Ho visto i blogger scientifici migliori della mia generazione distrutti dal disincanto, affamati nudi isterici, trascinarsi dall'alba al tramonto per i social network in cerca di una siringata rabbiosa di droga, un cazzeggio consolatorio, un mi piace regalato da uno sconosciuto da cui magari li separa un abisso di sensi; hipster laureati bramare l'antico contatto paradisiaco con la dinamo stellatanel macchinario della notte lontana dei loro […]
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What's in the list you keep (internally or physically) of things we still traditionally teach in our math courses that just feel "wrong" in 2014? Memorizing formulas is probably one of my least favorite things, and I know I have that in common with my students, so wherever and whenever possible! I like to teach them the concept on a pattern level or with strategies that have more than one
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Singapore maths is travelling the world: Amelia Tang: Singapore mathematics is going places, and there are no signs of it slowing down. From India to France and Chile, more countries have, in recent years, turned to the famed Singapore approach to teaching the subject, using visual means such as objects, pictures and diagrams to teach concepts. [source: mme rss]
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He preparado un documento en formato pdf con una clave de soluciones a problemas seleccionados del tema 2 de la asignatura Cálculo infinitesimal. Se puede descargar este documento pinchando en este enlace.
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Notes and resources for a presentation I gave to the North Sydney Region Maths Association this week: PowerPoint template for an AB quizAuthor's copy of article in MANSW Reflections - 2013 Conference IssueThanks for the invite and feedback - some great ideas from the group to experiment further with the AB Quiz concept.
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We just wrapped up our first quarter of the year, and I’ve noticed something. We like to play. Every class period has it’s own culture… it’s own “thing”.  It’s usually not very math-related, but I’d venture to say this “thing” … Continue reading →
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Let's examine the properties of Bernoulli distribution of probabilities, a distribution of a random variable ξ, defined on a space of only two elementary events that we call SUCCESS (with a probability measure p) and FAILURE (with probability measure q=1−p), and taking, correspondingly, two valuesξ(SUCCESS) = 1 andξ(FAILURE) = 0.So, we can say that our random variable ξ takes a value of 1 with probability p and a value of 0 with probability q=1−p:P(ξ=1) = p andP(ξ=0) = q = […]
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Today in Precalculus I went on a bit of a 7 minute digression, talking about continued fractions. You see, a recursive problem showed up (we’re doing sequences): Write out the first five terms of the following sequence: where So obviously they go like: ,, , , and  So great. Awesome. NOT. Booooring. So I showed them […]
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Thinking of leaving teaching? Here are some posts to get you started:"Breaking Up with Teaching""Twin Pressures on Good Novice Teachers""Trying Not to Leave the Classroom""The Trap of the 2nd Year""The Ledge""When you get down to it, who knows how long I'll be in this profession."Read them all, and you'll find yourself with many arguments for leaving classroom teaching. But what if you want to settle your doubts and stay? What's helpful for getting past this sort of angst, besides leaving?These […]
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We all want to teach for the love of learning and I bet lots of us wish that we didn't have to give grades. I firmly believe that grades should not be used for motivation, BUT, when done right, they are super useful as a way to clearly communicate what students have learned and where they need to put in more work.In  my 10th grade classes, we are using standards based grading, and so far, it's supporting the goals that I have for my classes immensely because the grades are composed of both […]
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As here (from Hereditary Genius, p. 21) Every tutor knows how difficult it is to drive abstract conceptions, even of the simplest kind, into the brains of most people—how feeble and hesitating is their mental grasp—how easily their brains are mazed—how incapable they are of precision and soundness of knowledge. It often occurs to persons familiar with […]
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A Mile of Pi enjoy!
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This morning my older son and I worked through a great example problem in Art of Problem Solving’s Introduction to Geometry book.  By amazing luck the section is one of the sections that Art of Problem Solving highlights on their … Continue reading →

### October 22, 2014

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God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the devil exists since its consistency cannot be proved. ~Hermann Klaus Hugo WeylThe 296th day of the year; 296 is the number of partitions of 30 with distinct parts. (Even very young students can enjoy exploring the number of partitions of integers, and the difference in the number when the parts must be distinct. The idea can be explored for very young students with number rods, etc)And just reminded that 1023 is the exponent for a mole, so […]
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Tina Cardone typically blogs at Drawing on Math. She attended the Northwestern Math Conference earlier this month and has recapped her first day and second two days there, including sessions on algebra, algebraic thinking, modeling, problem solving, and engagement.
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Math teachers at play #79 blog carnival is up!Go check it out. I found for example these interesting resources:A variation of Sudoku puzzle plus a link to many more. Spider web math art - I want to do this one with my kids.
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No summary available for this post.
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Want to enrich your Precalculus course with difficult problems? Look no further! I teach a high-octane version of Precalculus to students in our magnet program. Our course, like most Precalculus courses, covers a very wide variety of topics. As often … Continue reading →
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Starting Monday, you guys should be organized in new groups. No group can have three members that are together in the current groups. When I arrive on Monday, the groups should already be formed. You guys should start working on the laboratory on Polyhedra, Chapter 7. Make sure to bring whatever materials may be needed […]
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Each day I start the class with a Number Talk. I thought to continue building our multiplication strategies and make connections to our volume work, I would do Dot Quick Images. This is one of the images that I did yesterday: In this image I hoped to bring out the commutative and associative properties (not […]
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It’s Wednesday, and that means it’s Student Choice for today’s opener.  This week’s ideas comes from Katie, who loves dolphines.  An article from Discovery claims that dolphins may be math geniuses, using the subtraction of echos from their built-in sonar … Continue reading →
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Everything You Hate About Your Kid's 'New Math' May Be Wrong ​: Linda Sharp: I’ve been pretty vocal about my frustrations with my son’s math worksheets in recent years. Last year I wrote a post berating myself for not being able to understand his second-grade homework, what with the confusing blocks, lines, and swoopy curves he was using to figure out a subtraction problem that I’d been taught to solve via a comparatively simple (to my eyes, anyway) column. “Is this really intended to […]
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A presentation by Mark Green at the AMS Committee on Education meeting, October 2014
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I'm reproducing my comment to the post, "Who Needs Algebra?"on Mr. Honner's outstanding blog... http://mrhonner.com/archives/14291#comment-10579. I strongly recommend you  read all of his excellent pieces. The current one is compelling for all math educators not to mention the public... MY COMMENTS... First of all requiring an in-depth conceptual understanding of algebra for all students shows complete insensitivity to special needs students and their longsuffering […]
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There's been a lot of talk lately about the power of collaboration. The best thing a teacher can do to improve their practice is learn from other teachers. The main lesson coming from Shanghai is that their teachers get much more time to collaborate than we do. So, given that we spend the majority of our time (at work and at home) marking and planning lessons, how can we make time to learn
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Weil es immer weniger Kinder gibt, werden überall Schulen geschlossen. Das hat zur Folge, dass die Schulen um jeden Schüler kämpfen und auch bereitwilliger Schüler aufnehmen, als sie das vor zwanzig Jahren getan hätten. Und das hat zur Folge, dass speziell den Haupt- und Realschulen die Schüler davonlaufen. Sie werden … Continue reading →
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Exploring The Epic Chess Match Of Our Time: FiveThirtyEight: FiveThirtyEight and ESPN Films follow the drama of those nine days in a short documentary film, “The Man vs. The Machine,” directed by Frank Marshall. The story — part of FiveThirtyEight’s new digital short series, “Signals” — hinges on a single move, the 44th move of the second game. [source: mme rss]
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Earlier today I saw a tweet from Luke (@bettermaths) which said that the subject of those evenings #mathschat was “how should we assess year 9, in light of the new 1-9 grading system?” This got me thinking about year 9. It’s a funny year group in general. Traditionally it falls within key stage 3, but […]
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Someone on the internet asks: What percentage of the natural numbers have the digit ‘seven’ in them? This is going to sound like a weird answer: it’s 100%. I know, I know: you can point at 42 and 100 and 986,543,210 and 666,666,666,666,666 and at least a handful of others – so surely 100% can’t be right? (As an aside: you can reasonably say that there are as many ‘seven-free’ numbers as there are ‘sevenful’ ones as there are infinitely many […]