How to Play Prime Climb The Beautiful Mathematical Colorful Game Prime Climb is a game of strategy and luck for 2-4 players. Time: Roughly 10 minutes per player. Recommended for ages 10 and up. In the Box Prime Climb board 24 Prime [...]
I have begun teaching two, not one, but two sections of differential equations this quarter, and immediately, the classes are different from each other. In one, the students contribute, respond, emote; in the other, I feel like I’m [...]
Link: Massive Multiplayer Mathematics
Link: My response to the question: What could be done to make math seem less uncool? Here are a few suggestions: 1. Take student questions seriously. In my experience, students aren’t born disliking math, and probably everyone is [...]
Link: Gelfand Passes The mathematician Israel Gelfand died today. His obituary contrasts the direction of his work—fundamental and tool developing—with his advisor’s, which was more ambitious and difficult to follow. More and more, [...]
One of the remarkable things about learning math is that steps forward in understanding require a kind of forgetting. Everything always looks simple in retrospect; it’s letting go of your biases that prevent you from learning that is [...]
I had a little progress on my thesis work, recently. Essentially, I was able to prove what form a composition of transformations would take in the most general case. I had a hunch (and a hope) that it would be the simplest thing I could [...]
I’ve been terribly delinquent about posting here recently. I’ve just finished my second week of my summer course, Turtles All the Way Down, which I’ve been teaching through the Robinson Center at the University of Washington. I have [...]
I recently posed one of my favorite questions of all time to a student I’m tutoring. He’s something of a natural, and got it remarkably quickly. I personally spent hours on it the first time I heard it, and then years to understand all [...]
Link: Teachers struggle in math This article hits on a disturbing (and common) thread: teachers of young children often have very little positive experience with math to pass on.
Link: Math is the lie that makes us realize the truth. A great guest column in the NYTimes on the mathematics of scale. That such a simple idea is so applicable always strikes me as profound.
Imagine I took a small handful of pennies and showed them to you clumped together, then spread the same collection out into a wider array; you know, without having to think about it, that the pennies are worth the same amount either way. [...]
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