Adrian led a pack of disbelievers in the claim that 0.999… = 1. “You’re crazy, Orlin,” he said. “You’ve lost your grip on reality. Snap out of it.” With my sanity under challenge (for neither the first nor the last time), I pushed back by offering the standard proof of the fact.
Tag: teaching
Three Sentiments (or, Ode to the School Year)
And now we come to my third sentiment, the one occupying the greatest real estate in my thoughts.
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.
Stupid Graphs!
Dear Students Who Think Graphing is Stupid, Right on! Graphs are stupid. Cosmically stupid. Deliberately stupid. In fact - and I hate to pull this rhetorical trick on you, but you leave me with no choice - that's kind of the point. A graph is not an end product. It’s more like a map – a simplified … Continue reading Stupid Graphs!
Fistfuls of Sand (or, Why It Pays to Be a Stubborn Teacher)
This is a story about one small compromise that I refused to make, a stubborn act that paid off, though I didn’t expect it to. The setting is a Calculus classroom, but I hope the story will resonate with anyone who spies something dubious in the rigid and widespread assumption that learning can be endlessly itemized, carefully quantized, and instantaneously measured.