Monthly Archives: January 2011

Writing Math with a Sense of Rhythm

Posted on January 29, 2011 by jrh794

I wanted to tell a student the other day that he had no sense of rhythm.  I was helping him with a multi-step homework problem.  His work was densely written with little white space and no narrative.  All the steps … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

To Know and To Show

Posted on January 24, 2011 by jrh794

Lately I have been puttering around with  2011 Putnam problems during lunch. I think I know the answer to one of the questions. By this I mean I can work through a demonstration in my head. I call this “making … Continue reading →

Posted in Math and Me, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Need for Speed

Posted on January 17, 2011 by jrh794

At some point in a student’s algebra career they need to lose the doctrinaire algorithms and start to feel the need for speed.  Since my college algebra class seemed to accept the change depicted in this figure, I decided to … Continue reading →

Posted in Curriculum, Pedagogy, Rants, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The Diameter of a Log

Posted on January 10, 2011 by jrh794

This is an article about finding the diameter of a log – log as in “trunk of a tree in the horizontal position”.  Sorry to all mathematicians who were intrigued by the idea of the diameter of a logarithm.  At … Continue reading →

Posted in Math Explorations, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Notation Obfuscation

Posted on January 9, 2011 by jrh794

As I was walking to my office, a student flagged me down and asked how to solve a problem similar to this,  . He  could not understand the steps as written in his student’s solution manual. I blurted out, “That’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Curriculum, Rants, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Crowd Accelerated Innovation and Mathematics Instruction

Posted on January 3, 2011 by jrh794

I think the phenomena of Crowd Accelerated Innovation will eventually lead to improvements in the quality of instruction at the college-level.  In a recent article in Wired Magazine Chris Anderson the curator of the TED talks describes how the easy … Continue reading →

Posted in Cool Ideas, Pedagogy, Teaching | Leave a comment