Mathematics Teaching & Learning

It’s that time of year! Happy Pun-kin Pi!

What is the number of parking space containing the car?

To Scale: The Solar System

On a dry lakebed in Nevada, a group of friends build the first scale model of the solar system with complete planetary orbits: a true illustration of our place in the universe.

A film by Wylie Overstreet and Alex Gorosh

Pythagorean Theorem with Water

As a math education researcher and teacher, I am fascinated by all things related to the teaching and learning of mathematics, particularly at the K-12 level with topics like algebraic thinking, proportional thinking, mental math, number sense, and integer thinking some of my favorite topics.

As a consumer of articles, websites, images, and information in general, I often cannot help but see mathematics portrayed in a particular way. You can imagine what that way is, if you also grew up in the United States: math is hard, it is scary, it gives me anxiety, it is only for smart people, you’re either born with it or not. The list goes on, unfortunately.

I feel lucky to know that many math education researchers are interested in examining these issues in depth by looking at the disposition, beliefs, and attitudes people hold about mathematics.

I would love to mentor a future teacher on a project that seeks to identify some of these negative messages in the media and counter back with their own creation. This project could be the mixture of mathematics, teaching, technology, social media, and counseling all in one! The last three articles I posted certainly would provide good data to analyze.

As Jo Boaler, math educator at Standard and believer that math is for everyone, says, ‘Viva la revolution!’

http://www.ryot.org/8th-grade-math-problem-stumping-internet/928323

http://www.ryot.org/math-problem-third-grade-vietnam-students-doctorates/932756

Imagine we divide a segment (a) into a longer part (b) and a shorter part ©. If the ratio of a to b is the same as b to c, then that single ratio is golden. A rectangle whose sides are lengths a and b is called a golden rectangle, and it’s found in the geometry of a regular pentagon and the Platonic solids, five fundamental 3-D shapes, including the cube. The golden ratio is also tightly connected with the mathematically important Fibonacci sequence: The ratios of successive numbers in the Fibonacci sequence converge to the golden ratio.

But how much water is that, even? An acre-foot is the amount of water it would take to cover one acre of land in one foot of water. It's the unit the government uses to measure things like lake, river and reservoir capacity. If we were to take all of that water and put it in a cube, that cube would be about 35 feet long on any side. Here's what an acre-foot looks like with a 6-foot tall human next to it, for scale.