My Calculus students struggled to remember the difference between the two types of concavity, so I made up a poem for them: My fiancee, who also teaches Calculus, invented a different mnemonic...
Month: May 2013
Calculus Joke
In high school, my friend Gabe showed this to the Calculus teacher, Mr. Sherry: Mr. Sherry glared for a moment, and then silently made the following change...
Following Recipes
Another pep talk with the class, another metaphor hijacked. This is a theme in my life.
The Quadratic Formula Must Die! (or, Long Live the Quadratic Formula!)
It’s beyond me why I memorized the quadratic formula as an 8th grader, but didn’t hear the tale of Galois until college. If you ask me, the latter might just enrich the mind more than the former. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that math isn’t romantic.
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 think about. This is a story about both.
The Graph Factory
I want my students to see graphing as a subtle, meaningful craft. But when I mess up and assign too many graphs for homework, they just sprint through them, cranking them out like cheap factory products. It goes something like this…
Why can’t you divide by zero?
Suppose you’ve got a pizza. A nice charcoal-cooked one from New Haven, or an oven-hot Chicago deep-dish, or even one of those organic San Francisco artisan pies that somehow make artichoke hearts seem like they belong on a pizza. And, generous soul that you are, you’ve decided to share.
What did you get for #9? I got a snake.
Ever had a long computation that felt like this?
Degrees vs. Radians
An Open Letter to Students Wondering, "Why Do We Use Radians Instead of Degrees?" Dear Student, Let me start with a question of my own. Did you know that you speak Babylonian? You may not think that you do – you can’t ask for directions to a Babylonian bathroom, or order lunch off of a … Continue reading Degrees vs. Radians