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Channel: Reflections – Math with Bad Drawings
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A Ray of Light

There are moments of teaching I like to remember – episodes of cleverness, compassion, success. And then there are the other moments, the ones that my thoughts tend to flee, the ones I prefer not to...

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The Quadratic Formula Must Die! (or, Long Live the Quadratic Formula!)

Algebra students are often compelled to memorize the following jumble of symbols: Every adult I meet seems to remember this equation. Some quote it proudly. Others recall it grudgingly, fists clenched....

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Three Sentiments (or, Ode to the School Year)

Fast year, right? Summer is here. The seniors can be found draped across their desks, exploring stages of hibernation so deep that they are yet uncharted by the medical community. It’s all very...

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How Fast is Exponential Growth? (Or, Yao Ming Confronts the Vastness of the...

On this humble brown planet, we’re used to things growing at a steady pace. Trees add a ring every year. Families expand by one child or marriage at a time. Even in their most extreme months of...

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History’s Greatest Chess Matches

I’ve been poking at chess lately, the way a chimpanzee might poke at a car engine. Does he understand it? Not really. Is he having fun? Sure! Chess is much like math. Instead of problem sets, you play...

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The Human and the Cosmic

Neil Armstrong – the first man to set foot on the moon, with Buzz Aldrin right behind him and Michael Collins orbiting above – died precisely one year ago. I wrote a clumsy tribute that evening. This...

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Is Memorization Necessary, Evil, or Both?

At The Atlantic today, I have an essay weighing in on the decades-long debate over memorization, trying to cut a middle path between two extremes: 1. “Memorization is the enemy. It’s the antithesis of...

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Black Boxes (or: Just Say No to Voodoo Formulas)

We’ve all got black boxes in our lives. A black box is a little mystery that you take for granted. It’s something you use without thinking, without skepticism, without once opening the lid to peek at...

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The Mental Machinery of the Chess Master

As a Psych major in college, I learned about some cool experiments. Fatal shocks. Coldhearted preachers. The staggering forces of peer pressure. I saw slobbering dogs, wailing babies, and semi-literate...

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Learning to rock-climb is changing how I’ll teach math.

Five years out of college—and taking a year off from teaching—I find myself in a precarious new position: dangling by ropes, 35 feet up a wall, a beginner again. Learning to rock-climb is as exhausting...

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Whiteboards: A Love Story

One piece of classroom tech has always vexed and fascinated me. It’s my magic wand, my Batmobile, the love of my teaching life. I’m a whiteboard man. My romance with the whiteboard began with...

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Blaming the Last Guy

Like most first-year teachers, I couldn’t believe some of the gaps in my kids’ knowledge. My geometry students scowled at word problems, mangled the distributive property, and handled fractions with...

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Undiscovered Math

One day in fifth grade, I was playing with numbers, scribbling down products and quotients—you know, typical cool-kid stuff—when I noticed a pattern. Take any pair of numbers that are two apart (like...

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39 Ways to Love Math

Last week, 6,000 mathematicians met in Baltimore. They crowded in conference rooms, swapped gossip over beers, and wherever free food appeared, they lined up like ants. On a table in the hallway of the...

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Confessions of a Math Major

I’m not proud to say it, but I majored in math because I wanted people to think I was smart. I chose the math major as a status symbol, a résumé-topper. I consider myself an innocent dreamer, a lover...

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Two-Column Proofs that Two-Column Proofs are Terrible

Theorem #1: “Justifying steps” ought to be an opaque, frustrating process. Statement Reason 1. In an argument, all steps must be justified. 1. Definition of Argument 2. In real, adult arguments, such...

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The Teacher-Centric Universe (or, Galileo Would Be Ashamed)

My first year out of college, 22 years old and glimmering with hubris, I taught 9th-grade Earth Science. I’d last studied the subject myself in 8th grade, which made for a fun year, if “fun” can refer...

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Who Cheating Hurts

My first stab at a “cheating is bad” speech came when I realized the magnitude of over-the-shoulder copying on my daily trigonometry quizzes. It was epidemic. So, turning reluctantly from teacher to...

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How to Talk to a Mathematician

In an email, Bonny Becker asks: How do I go about gaining a better understanding of what my math PhD-seeking son is talking about? This question haunts those of us with a beloved mathematician in our...

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Teaching as Self-Sacrifice

Like everyone else, I’m heir to the prejudices of my culture. So even though I know firsthand that teaching is a profession, on some level I see it as an act of self-sacrifice, as a hard path...

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