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It’s beyond Kitten’s level and beyond my math club (what’s left of it), but for those of you who are interested, this Sunday is e Day. The only place I can remember seeing the announcement is on the blog 360:
[Do you have an e-Day post? I'd be glad add your link!]
If you’ve never heard of e before, then perhaps you are young enough (or young at heart? 
) to enjoy celebrating his more famous cousin. Pi Day is coming next month. . .
Updates
Maria posted a good introduction to e:
And Zac added:
Over at Walking Randomly, Mike has posted a great explanation with FAQs:
You can send in articles now for either carnival:
- the Carnival of Mathematics,
coming to The Endeavour this Friday,the latest edition is now posted here, - or the Math Teachers at Play carnival, which will appear at mathrecreation on February 19th.
Nerds battle hungry football players who want to eat their giant fractal Dorito creation:
For more details on this video (and photos of the fractal’s construction), check out the Blown Apart Studios page. I’m looking forward to their next project, Nerd High, a musical comedy set in an alternate reality where nerds rule the school and jocks are the outcasts.
[Photo by Jayel Aheram.]
When I first read about Swagbucks, I figured there had to be a catch. How could they give away $5 Amazon.com gift certificates just for using their search engine?
But over the past 12 months, I’ve collected $45 worth of free books, just for doing searches I would have done anyway. I bought a couple of Christmas gifts and an Ed Zaccaro book to supplement Kitten’s schoolwork.
If you’d like to try it out for yourself:
I thought I knew math fairly well.
I thought arithmetic was boring.
I thought the reason other nations beat America in international math tests was that their students worked harder than ours.
I thought all sorts of silly things before I read Liping Ma’s Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics. Now this must-read book is coming out in a new edition, due in bookstores next week.
I can hardly wait!
In American elementary mathematics education, arithmetic is viewed as negligible, sometimes even with pity and disdain—like Cinderella in her stepmother’s house. Many people seem to believe that arithmetic is only composed of a multitude of “math facts” and a handful of algorithms. . . Who would expect that the intellectual demand for learning such a subject actually is challenging and exciting?
— Liping Ma
Arithmetic in American Mathematics Education: An Abandoned Arena?
The new Math Teachers at Play blog carnival is open at math hombre for your browsing pleasure:
The carnival features a wide variety of posts about math and teaching, along with 6 puzzle questions and a warning about the “rare but deadly Blogcarnival Catch 22.” Enjoy!
If you would like to host a future edition of Math Teachers at Play, leave a comment below or send me an email.
Discovered this in my blog reader this morning, and I thought you would enjoy it, too.
[Note: Stu is not the person's real name, but is short for "student."]
Stu came to my office looking for a new major. Stu is bad at math and can’t handle the math sequence required of business majors. So Stu was wondering what majors require the lowest level math sequence that counts towards graduation.
I listed a few.
Stu was disappointed. Stu pointed out that you don’t usually think about people in those fields as making a lot of money. Stu lamented that everything that is in demand requires math.
— Rudbeckia Hirta
Learning Curves blog
[Photo by mape_s.]
I’m afraid that Math Club may have fallen victim to the economy, which is worse in our town than in the nation in general. Homeschooling families have tight budgets even in the best of times, and now they seem to be cutting back all non-essentials. I assumed that last semester’s students would return, but I should have asked for an RSVP.
Still, Kitten and I had a fun time together. We played four rounds of Tens Concentration, since I had spread out cards on the tables in the library meeting room before we realized that no one was coming. Had to pick up the cards one way or another, so we figured we might as well enjoy them! She won the first two rounds, which put her in a good mood for our lesson.
I had written “Prime numbers are like monkeys!” on the whiteboard, and Kitten asked me what that meant. That was all the encouragement I needed to launch into my planned lesson, despite the frustrating dearth of students. The idea is taken from Danica McKellar’s book Math Doesn’t Suck.
Hmmm. Looks like the math carnival logo needs an update to reflect the new schedule.
The Math Teachers at Play carnival is coming next week, at a new host blog, Math Hombre. Do you blog about teaching or learning preK-12th grade mathematics? MTaP would love to feature your post! Before school gets back into full swing, please take the time to send in a submission.
Get this book from the library to spark some mathy blog post ideas.
Finally, both math carnivals are looking for host blogs. Hosting takes a fair bit of work, but it’s a lot of fun because you get to discover new blogs and read a wide variety of interesting posts — and you usually get a nice traffic spike from the carnival, too.
You can see which months are available by clicking the “future hosts” tab on each carnival’s information page:
If you want more information about how to host a blog carnival, let me know. I’ll send you my detailed “How to Host” email. And if you want to volunteer, email me for MTaP or Mike for CoM.
[Photo by pfala.]
Did you know that playing games is one of the Top 10 Ways To Improve Your Brain Fitness? So slip into your workout clothes and pump up those mental muscles with the 2010 Mathematics Game!
Here are the rules:
Use the digits in the year 2010 to write mathematical expressions for the counting numbers 1 through 100.
- All four digits must be used in each expression. You may not use any other numbers except 2, 0, 1, and 0.
- You may use the arithmetic operations +, -, x, ÷, sqrt (square root), ^ (raise to a power), and ! (factorial). You may also use parentheses, brackets, or other grouping symbols.
- You may use a decimal point to create numbers such as .1, .02, etc.
- Multi-digit numbers such as 20 or 102 may be used, but preference is given to solutions that avoid them.
Bonus Rule
You may use the overhead-bar (vinculum), dots, or brackets to mark a repeating decimal.[Note to teachers: This rule is not part of the Math Forum guidelines. It makes a significant difference in the number of possible solutions, however, and it should not be too difficult for high school students or advanced middle schoolers.]
[Photo by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com.]
Can you believe we’re almost a whole decade into the no-longer-new millennium? Traditionally, the last week of December marks a time to look back and to look ahead: What have we accomplished this year? And what comes next?
More specifically, for bloggers:
Maria beat me to it. John did a twist on the topic. And here is my own retrospective look at the most popular blog posts from this year, along with related blogging goals for 2010.
Warning: All Lists are Biased
I’ve checked the total post views count as of Wednesday morning, December 30th. Any such list is biased toward posts that appeared earlier in the year. It’s almost impossible for anything written in November or December — even something as popular as Narnia math — to work its way into the Top Ten.
I just tried the TextMaker component of SoftMaker Office 2008, and it seems to handle equations much better than Open Office does. According to reviewers (here and here), it plays nicer with Word files than Open Office does, too. I’ve had experience with .doc files mangled by Open Office — what a pain!
Until December 31, SoftMaker is running a free download-for-charity promotion:
That makes now a great time to test out the program. Thank you, Mike, for the tip!
If the embedded video doesn’t work on your computer, you can find the original here: Mannheim Steamroller – ‘Joy To The World’.
My heart is steadfast, O God,
my heart is steadfast;
I will sing and make music.Awake, my soul!
Awake, harp and lyre!
I will awaken the dawn.I will praise you, O Lord, among the nations;
I will sing of you among the peoples.For great is your love, reaching to the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches to the skies.Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;
let your glory be over all the earth.— Psalm 57:7-11
[Taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, (c)1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society, used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.]
If you move quickly, you can grab some great teaching tips in this free download:
Mr. D says the offer is good for 24 hours, so if you don’t notice this until Wednesday morning, it’s still worth a try to follow the link.
A mathematical Christmas? You bet! For instance, I just noticed that Raymond Smullyan’s The Lady or the Tiger is finally back in print. My family and my math club students have enjoyed many of the puzzles in this book over the years, and I can’t think of a better stocking stuffer for the mathophile in your family.
(I do hope that means the rest of Raymond Smullyan’s puzzle books will be coming back, too!)
In the holiday gift-giving spirit, I’ve started making a list. Check out the links below for more mathematical Christmas present ideas.
The math carnival is posted and ready for your browsing pleasure:
Puzzlers, riddlers, thinkers, doers, novices, experts, come one , come all! First off, in honor of the number 21, is a puzzle, fresh from the oven.
The Numberland News runs personal ads. 21 was looking for a new friend and put an ad in…
The Math Teachers at Play blog carnival is a collection of tips, tidbits, games, and activities for students and teachers of preK-12 mathematics. If you write about learning or teaching math, we would love to have you join us. Just fill out the handy submission tool by Wednesday night (old posts are welcome, as long as they haven’t been published in past editions of this carnival), and then enjoy the mathy fun this Friday at Math Mama Writes….
And take a few minutes to vote for your favorites at the edublog awards. Several math bloggers are represented, and I’m sure they would appreciate your support!
[Photo by armigeress.]
In 4th grade, math problems take a large step up on the difficulty scale. Students are more mature and can read and follow more complex stories. Multi-step word problems become the new norm, and proportional relationships (like “three times as many”) show up frequently. As the year progresses, fractions grow to be a dominant theme.
As a math teacher, one of my top goals is that my students learn to solve word problems. Arithmetic is (relatively) easy, but many children struggle in applying it to “real world” situations.
In previous posts, I introduced the problem-solving tools of word algebra and bar diagrams, either of which can help students organize the information in a word problem and translate it into a mathematical calculation. The earlier posts in this series are:
- Pre-algebra Problem Solving: Preschool and Early Elementary
- Pre-Algebra Problem Solving: The Tools
- Pre-Algebra Problem Solving: 2nd Grade
- Pre-Algebra Problem Solving: 3rd Grade
In this installment, I will continue to demonstrate the problem-solving tool of bar diagrams through a series of ten 4th grade problems based on the Singapore Primary Math series, level 4A. For your reading pleasure, I have translated the problems into the universe of a family-favorite story by C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
The new Carnival of Mathematics is up and ready for browsing:
Enjoy!
And if you’re a math blogger who would like to see your best work in print, check out Math Mama’s call for posts:
Here’s a new badge for my sidebar, courtesy of Guide to Online Schools, who recently published their list of The Top 200 Education Blogs. I recognized several of them — including two old friends: I Want to Teach Forever and Teaching College Math — but many were new to me. As with all such lists, the rankings are mere opinion, but this seems like a well-balanced assortment. I look forward to browsing the blogs.
