Archive for: June 2007

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Maia’s Summer Reading
Want to see what she’s been reading?
Click Here.

MathMojo has been on the move. Mostly with new Ideas for bringing you math inspiration and methods.

I’ve been fooling around with a Web 2.0 site called Squidoo. Some of you might know about it, but for those who don’t:

Squidoo is a new “social networking” site. That may or may not mean anything to you now, but it will, soon. This Soc. Net. stuff is taking over the world, much like google has.

Squidoo has got to be by far the easiest and most effective way to get a web page up free, and fast, and get pretty decent google rankings (which is only important if you have a business).

So I’ve been putting up “lenses” (that’s what squidoo calls their “mini-sites”) like crazy. Here are links to the most relevant ones:

• Multiplication
  Some basic info on how to start learning multiplication
• Math Magic
• The Hipster PDA
  The Hipster is a free and useful learning/scheduling lifehack.
• Arse Mathematica
  The “Arse Mathematica” awards. Let’s start a trend!

I just read an interesting and valuable post by a concerned parent at “Mindless Math Mutterings” (which are anything but). I like that blogger’s thoughtful posts about education.

This particular post was about becoming and expert with math “facts.”

I have one observation that I feel has been terminally left out of this discussion, though:

Although the basic building blocks must be able to be used immediately when needed, what we generically call “memorization” is a dead-end for most people.

We require children to sit and “memorize” in order to learn, but we don’t teach them how to memorize. Memorization is a skill, just like other thinking skills, that needs learning and tweaking. Rote memory is a terrible myth. I mean, it works for some, but it is not the only, nor is it the best, way for most people. (more…)

This post is about meaning and math

First we’ll learn a math concept - Lowest (or Least) Common Denominator (or LCD). Then we’ll talk about how it’s sometimes used in everyday life.

In layman’s (non-mathematician’s, in this case) terms, the LCD is the largest partition of something that will also go into another thing of the same kind.

What the heck does that mean? (more…)

Maia on the lawn

Once again, not much to do with math on this post. Just testing my new flickr acount, and how it integrates with this wordpress blog.

This is our dog Maia. She is a golden retriever, and is six years old. She was born in May, which was part of the reason we named her Maia. Maia is also a star in the Pleiades, so we named her after a star, because we named our other golden retriever after a scientist and astronomer (Galileo). Also, at the time I was learning computer art, and some of the other students were using a 3-d animation program called Maya, and I liked the sound of the name.

For those who are not aware of it, you can get daily e-mails updates to online articles, web-pages, blog posts etc., that have been recently posted, about any subjects you like, through google alerts.

I get alerts on topics like “homeschool math” and “basic math.” The second of those two alerted me to a great blog post at Joie de vivre - Algebra. Her motto is “Stories only happen to the people who can tell them.” Manifique!

Her post was about math ed and algebra, their relevance, and how they’re pretty well murdered in public schools.

(more…)