Here we go again

Latest issue of Summing Up

Latest "NCTM Summing Up" posts the inevitable. More study needed. What a surprise. As if we haven't done enough studies already! It's business as usual. The major players in the math ed community want to have fun telling us what we should be doing with our students using scare tactics to get the nervous public to go along with their latest hype. We're still a "Nation at Risk" and will continue to be as long as the "hafta-do" curriculum rules in most schools. Kids need to be heard more and college professors less because the current paradigm is not making any substantial improvements in teaching school math.

Google's latest math trick

(Click on image to go to blog entry.)

Compare the Google result with WolframAlpha. Since we search all the time it's convenient to have this feature inside of Google. But we've had WolframAlpha for while. So it's good to have choices. Right? Well, most of the time. With vulnerable math students using the same graphing software can be a plus. Think of it as a bicycle with training wheels. Once the training is successfully over switching bicycles can indeed be fun. But most math students have struggled with staying on the bicycle even with training wheels moving from one software app to another until they collide head on with their fragile knowledge of math and give up. (Refer to my "Ok, if you say so." story in Mathematical Encounters.)  

Google

WolframAlpha

Noon Day project measurements begin this week- September 19, 2011

Carl Sagan tells the story (6.5min)

The Goal of the Noon Day Project is to have students measure the circumference of the earth using a method that was first used by Eratosthenes over 2000 years ago. Students at various sites around the world will measure shadows cast by a meter stick and compare their results. From this data students will be able to calculate the circumference of the earth.

Doing the measurements

Follow me on Twitter (Hashtag #noondaymeasure) as I recreate the experiment that Eratosthenes did. I hope to do my measurements on September 22 weather permitting.
There is some good background material on the measurement at the Noon Day project site hosted by the CIESE (Center for Innovation in Engineering & Science Education) - Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ.

Brother, can you spare a quarter (or something like that?)

          Misconceptions revisited...

How much do the pencils cost?

Two different versions of the same thing?

Example from mathatube.org (2:19)

Video makes it more interesting. Right? Wrong.. It's still boring....

Those #?%& Supermarkets: They're Out to Catch You

Nothing like the word Free to make you take notice at a supermarket. But of course there is always a catch since I have to buy at least one 16 oz. package for $3.99. So what I'm really paying for my free box of strawberries is $2.00! Now if I'm in the market for more than one package I might consider paying $2.00 per package. But since for me they go bad pretty quickly and I'll never finish the second box before it does goes bad, that really means I'm paying $3.99 for the box I actually eat! Wouldn't it be just plain old easier and more honest to leave the word "free" out if the sign read:

Get your students to find examples of this and to write the manager of a store that pulls this nonsense and see how the company tries to justify this deception.

Why the Chelsea Spike in the early 1990s?

In the early days of summer nature has a way of entertaining us with magical views of flowers in full bloom. A kind of neat phenomena that makes everyone who is not too busy take notice. A camera can capture such a scene in its full glory. Mathematical photos such as graphs can also reveal some interesting neat phenomena that can bring about similar rewards. At least it did for me when Kelvin Misco of Wolfram Research at their booth at the NCTM conference in April showed me what happens when you type the name Chelsea at the Wolfram Alpha website. You can do additional baby name investigations at this cool website. Type a name and see what happens. Students really like this one and will explore it in interesting ways without much help. I'm curious if any math teachers have used this. If you try it with kids let me know how it went.