I believe that millions of children each year, as well as almost that many adults, are not clear about what the whole numbers are. It’s not just the whole numbers, either. Fractions, decimals, algebra, even math itself. What are they? Do you have a good working definition? Or do you maybe think there is only one “right” definition for any of them? [...]
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Can I choke him now? Photo by foxphotograpy (Edited by Brian) I have a book sitting in front of me called, Introduction to Mathematical Thinking by Friedrich Waismann; the foreword is by Karl Menger, both of whom I admire greatly. This book has opened my eyes to something very important about math education. [...] There was a wonderful article in the Wall Street Journal today about mathematics in the former Soviet Union. It is worth reading for anyone interested in finding out a little about the inner beauty of math. Here’s a short except: what mathematics really is: “It was a wonderful education… Gelfand amazed me by talking of [...] Hey, you droogs, There was an interesting post on the Whallah! blog about an article in the Associated Press, concerning the education of math teachers in public schools. Apparently the National Council on Teacher Quality has done a comprehensive study to come to the conclusion that everyone who is not an “expert” has known for years: [...] Someone wrote in to ask: 40 * 53 is 125. Why isn’t it 0? On the Math.Com website, problems such as 4 to the zero power times 5 to the third power have an answer of 125 as correct. Shouldn’t the answer be zero. If not, why? Thank you! Professor Homunculus’ response: The [...] Well, believe it or not, using the “math” they taught you in school, you can “prove” that is true. Part of the math curriculum of schools is estimating, or rounding up. This is a legitimate and important concept, when it is taught by competent and interested teachers. Man, is that a big “when.” [...] “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.” – Albert Einstein Towards the end of making math more meaningful, I’d like to discuss something in recent news that resonates with that theme. While listening to NPR, I heard an interesting story about how political candidates affect each other. You can hear [...] “Considering the postmodernist argument that mathematics is nothing more than a game invented by mathematicians, Ben-Ari compares math with chess in the following thought experiment. Supposing we came into contact with an advanced extraterrestrial civilization — would you expect these extraterrestrials to know the Pythagorean Theorem? Of course we would, even though it would have [...] |
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