Math is a very visual subject.
I made this ‘meme‘ on a calculus topic, but it applies equally well to a whole bunch of other areas.
Category: Education
The Best Transit Ever
Unless you’ve just arrived from another planet, you’d know that an incredibly rare astronomical event recently passed – the transit of Venus.
Two, One, Zero, Blast Off! (or, How To Teach Subtraction)
Last week, I got to help my son learn subtraction with borrowing. He’s already learned how to subtract two-digit numbers when borrowing is not needed, as you can see from the picture below.
Continue reading Two, One, Zero, Blast Off! (or, How To Teach Subtraction)
Barack Obama’s Education Policy
A while ago, I sent an email to all the people who might be president in 2013. In it, I asked :
- What is the most important thing you would do, as president, to ensure America’s future prosperity?
- Relative to this, how important to America’s future prosperity is the goal of ensuring all children have access to affordable education?
- What plans, if any, do you have to ensure that all Americans have affordable access to high-quality education?
Today, the first reply came in – from Barack Obama. No reply yet from any of the Republican candidates, though I suppose there’s only one that matters now.
I’ve reproduced Barack Obama’s letter below. I’ll comment further when I get a reply from Mitt Romney, or when I’m convinced I’m not going to get one.
Getting Your Kid Into a UK University
The Financial Times has a rather technical piece on the effect of some changes in how British Universities will be funded. Basically, the universities have been told
- top students won’t count against your quota.
- quotas will be cut in proportion.
- non-university institutes of higher learning have successfully obtained 10000 quota places that were previously held by universities.
No More Money for British Maths
The EPSRC, or “Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council” is the body in the UK that decides what kinds of research in the physical sciences will get government grant money. Grant money is needed for advanced research in mathematics for the following reasons :
- This kind of research produces amazing benefits down the track, however
- The benefits come too slowly for the private sector to be interested in funding research
A Child’s View of Standardized Testing
My son was asked to write a short essay on standardized testing. I thought I’d share it with the world. Note that these are his opinions, not mine!
I’ve edited it slightly for clarity.
Swimming and Math
I was doing a bit of random lunch-hour web-surfing, and came across a blog post by a swimming instructor. It starts with the eye-catching line “before you can teach something, you have to realize it’s hard”
The blogger writes about their insights into how (and how not) to teach swimming, and then wonders “how much this applies to other areas (teaching math in elementary school, for example?)” Having read the post, I’d say an awful lot does. Here’s my take on it.
Should Students Pay for Education?
When I was a student in university, I felt quite strongly about this issue. I believed firmly that education should be free. After all, education is necessary for a nation to succeed. An educated populace, I believed, should be seen as a form of infrastructure – as necessary for a strong economy as good transport or telecommunications systems. Therefore, the government should pay for everyone to get educated for free, I thought.
Incentives – Grading On A Curve
Tim Harford is an economist who has a newspaper column called “The Undercover Economist”. He presents tongue-in-cheek answers to a wide variety of questions from readers. In his book, “Dear Undercover Economist,” some of his favorite responses have been collected together. Two that really tickled me were related to the practice of grading on a curve.