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Recent Posts
Blogs on Math Teaching
Author Archives: Dan
Nine Dangerous Things & Math Isn’t Necessary
I like this little writeup on Nine Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School from Forbes. It pithily gets into the consequences of having a system that’s so standardized that is responsible for educating–a fundamentally intimate and nonstandard task, if … Continue reading
Forgot Algebra
Things are crazy busy, and haven’t posted in too long. I’m not going to change that in any serious way at the moment, but when xkcd throws up something this topical, I have a duty to pass it along here.
The Coolest New Thing on the Internet
Two brief announcements. First, the coolest new thing on the internet. This is an interactive update to the old powers of 10 video, and the kind of thing you can spend a lot of time trying to get your brain … Continue reading
You Will Not Win the Lottery
And making money in Vegas is a bad long term life plan. It doesn’t matter what your “strategy” is. These games of chance are built around a simple premise: no matter who you are or what you do, the more … Continue reading
Julia Robinson Festival Retrospective
It was the culmination of a lot of work, and now it’s over. The conclusion: Seattle’s first Julia Robinson Festival was amazing. We had 150 students and 50 volunteers working on compelling activities for almost three hours followed by the … Continue reading
Best of the Blog!
Check out the new Best of the Blog page! It’s a place to find some of our favorite lessons, videos, commentary and inspiration since we’ve been writing here. For those in readers, the full link is here: http://mathforlove.com/best-of-the-blog/.
Towers of Hanoi Proof
This is the Towers of Hanoi. The puzzle is almost intuitive: how can you move the tower from the left peg to the right without placing any larger disks on top of any smaller disks. Wikipedia has this animated … Continue reading
Posted in game, lesson
Tagged combinatorics, Counting Problems, induction, proof, student, towers of hanoi
1 Comment
A Math Lesson in Three Acts
(With apologies to Dan Meyer) I’ve often had a gut feeling that we actually invest life into math questions that grab us. Here’ s a question I like: Question: How does a bishop behave on a torus chess board? Many … Continue reading
Posted in lesson
Tagged bishop, bishop on a torus board, chess, chess problem, math, mod n, story, z/Zn
3 Comments
Juggling and Mathematics: Nickolai Pirak at Julia Robinson Festival
Looking for another reason to sign up for the Julia Robinson Math Festival, happening this Sunday, March 18? http://mathforlove.com/julia-robinson-festival/register/ Nickolai Pirak is a professional juggler from Seattle who will be giving a presentation at the festival on the relationship between … Continue reading
Posted in Announcement
Tagged juggling, Julia Robinson Festival, math, nickolai pirak, siteswaps
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Pythagorean Video II: Proving the Theorem
I was planning to redo this video, but with the Julia Robinson Festival coming up on Sunday, it’s going to be a while before I get it together, so here it is, as it is. Let me know what you … Continue reading
