We get them in our inbox every day – a reminder for the dentist appointment, an alert about a payment from the bank account, or a possible fraudulent charge, and so on. Many of us have become so accustomed to these reminders and alerts that we find ourselves somewhat dependent on them. This led me to wonder if my students… Read more →
Lately, I have been using various technology tools to increase interactivity within the classroom. I have moved toward smartphone apps that can readily engage students. Here’s my current list: Google Classroom – students can post comments and answer questions in real time Remind – this is a messaging service where I can instantly text message students without knowing their phone… Read more →
MathJax is a web-based JavaScript application that you can use to include LaTeX in your web pages, like the following.\[ \cos^2x+\sin^2x=1 \]\[ \int x \, dx = \frac{x^2}{2}+C \]No GIF’s to export, no complex, additional markups to learn etc. It just works! If you want to use it in Blogger, click here. Planning to use it to create more math… Read more →
In my Introduction to Proofs course, I discussed the proof the following: The cube of an integer is of the form 9k, 9k+1, or 9k+8, for some integer k. The problem is from the text I use, How to Think Like a Mathematician: A Companion to Undergraduate Mathematics The big idea here is to to note that any integer can… Read more →
An article in last Sunday’s New York Times discusses the complex issue of teacher preparation. The writer of the article includes a lengthy discussion of math teaching in particular. I found it to be quite interesting – the work of math educators doesn’t usually make it to mainstream media. Hopefully the Times will continue its coverage of key education issues… Read more →
One of the main aims in teaching a Math for Liberal Arts course is to get students to have a better appreciation of general mathematics. And what better way to do that than to have them read math articles or blogs aimed at a general audience? Sounds like a good plan, but I needed to make it a graded assignment… Read more →
For the past three years, I have been teaching an online math course every semester. To ensure that the students taking the class are really the ones who signed up, I have always used in class midterm and final exams. I check their ID and my grading system system reflects a heavy weighting toward the in-class tests. I encourage students… Read more →
One way I motivate critical thinking in my Intro to Proofs class is by using counterexamples. The book, Using Counter-examples in Calculus by Mason and Klymchuk, provides an accessible set of ideas to think about. Producing counterexamples is an important step to thinking about proofs in general, especially for students who are used to computations. What I really liked about… Read more →
Those of us who regularly deal with entering college freshmen are all too familiar with their inadequate math preparation. But in fact, high school mathematics has been ramped up quite a bit in terms of content. What happened? An article in the American Physical Society discusses this paradox. The author of the article, Dr. Joseph Ganem, is a professor of… Read more →
Wolfram Alpha is a free, online, computational engine. It provides some of the power of a computational algebra system (CAS) such as Maple or Mathematica without having to learn the proper syntax. However, it takes a little bit of practice to get WA to give exactly what you want. Here, I’ll give a list of queries that are commonly used… Read more →