Archive for: March 2008

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Today a concerned reader took issue with what he understands my methods to be. (See comment #4 at Augends, Addends and the Commutative Law of Addition.)
Fair enough, but I think he may have misunderstood my methods.

That could, of course, be due to the way I communicate them (or miscommunicate them). First let me say that none of the algorithms (ways of solving math problems) I teach are “mine.” “Math Mojo” is the name of my attitude, not the methods. The methods have been either gleaned from better sources than me (and most are hundreds, if not thousands, of years older), or I have “re-invented” them. That is typical for most people’s alternative methods.

Now to the issue; the reader stated:

After all these years (30) of struggling to teach children math, I finally realize why it is so difficult. A brief perusal of some of the mathematical girations you go through to multiply two numbers together explains a lot of why kids are poor at math. Commutative and associative properties are more easily understood when you have the basic tools to work with without adding zeros then subtracting the number from your cousins name on your mother’s side of the family. Teach the basics by rote then progress to the more abstract. Simple to complex seems to work.

Professor Homunculus’ reply:

I’m sorry you’ve come to that conclusion. If you’ve been teaching math for 30 years, you surely have some insights. But I can’t see see how you’d say, “simple to complex” seems to work. May I ask where it seems to work? And if it does, why is it a struggle for you, and why is it so difficult? Have you been teaching with the “girations” (sic) you say I use to make it so frustrating?

I’m not quite sure I understand the logic of your position.

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While surfing some of the other math blogs in the blogosphere, I ran across a post in Michael Paul Goldenberg’s Rational Mathematics Education blog. Rational Math Ed is a gem of a blog, and is a must if you are a public school teacher or administrator.

In a recent post of his he mentions an article written by Paul Lockhart entitled, “A Mathematician’s Lament.” It was written in 2002, but has only gotten mass coverage recently, since it was featured on a post at the website of Keith Devlin.

For those of you who don’t know Keith Devlin, you are in for a treat. His writings are among the most lucid you will ever read about math. He makes very complicated things easy to understand. Please do yourself a great favor and visit his website.

You may have heard his lilting voice on NPR as “The Math Guy.” Devlin has also linked to Lockhart’s article, which is available as a free PDF download.

If you have any interest in math at all, even if you are not an educator, you will truly enjoy the enlightening thoughts that Lockhart shares with you. His appreciation, and enthusiasm for math, and teaching it are joy to read.

So take some time and revel in the passion Lockhart will enchant you with. Download the article now from the bottom of the post at Devlin’s site.

Please read both the Goldenberg and the Devlin essays about the article. They say everything I’d want to say, only better.

Photography by Santarosa, Justin Wong and Brian. Edited by Brian

(This was meant to be posted on Monday. Sorry about the lateness).

Many of us who struggle to learn math (yes, I am one of them) suffer from assorted challenges, like ADD, procrastination, lack of focus, depression, and other things that are or aren’t nameable.

That’s no big, deal, unless we chose to make it one. Every challenge is just that, a call to step up and beat it. So we constantly seek methods, systems and other tools to help us. That’s partly what makes a challenge fun - finding new, cool things that other people never think about.

Recently I was speaking with a friend of mine. He seems to get a lot done, and I always admired that about him. I mentioned that to him, and he seems to think that he doesn’t really. At least not naturally, anyway.

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Recently I got an request to review my booklet, “Numbers Juggling - Times without the Tables.” Request came from Sol Lederman, who runs the “Wildaboutmath” blog.

I’d heard that name before, but really couldn’t remember much about Sol, so I checked out his blog to see how serious it was.

Wow, it’s a great blog, full of lots of valuable information about math, how to learn and teach math, and the joy of math. You should definitely check it out.

Sol reviewed the booklet, and you can read his review here.

The review was generally positive, but Sol had a very valid and important criticism. Since the greatest value of the booklet is really in the seven follow-up e-mails in the e-mail course, it should be marketed as a course, rather than a booklet.

That got me thinking (as every good book-review should do). So now I am developing real, in-depth, home-study courses for each of the basic operations of arithmetic.

Each will be about thirty modules long. The modules will walk you through the basics to absolutely turbo-charged speed-math methods.

I’ll be telling you more about it as it develops. If you are interested drop me an e-mail. (Use the contact box near the upper right corner of this page).

Now on to the ADD part of this post. Many people who have problems with math have problems with attention, focus, concentration, etc. I am one of them. I have suffered with ADD for as long as I can remember. It was only “officially” diagnosed a few years ago.

As it happens, Sol suffers from it as well. Or suffered. He has a blog dedicated to journaling his recent “cure.” I have not met Sol, and cannot vouch for anything, but he seems very dedicated to describing his experiences honestly.

Let me say that I am a skeptic, down to my bones, and hope you take everything with a grain of salt. But I would investigate what he has to say. I have subscribed to the RSS feed to his site, and intend to look into the methods he as used. You might want to take a look as well.

When I was a kid, my father introduced me to the New York Times Crossword Puzzle. Dad commuted from our house to New York City every weekday, and often rode the Long Island RailRoad. He took the puzzle every day. He solved it in pen. He also solved the cryptograms in pen. I was impressed.

He taught me some basic logic for the solution of both puzzles. I did the cryptograms for awhile, but didn’t get into the crossword puzzle until a few years ago. My wife and I try to do it every Thursday through Sunday.

You may not know this (I didn’t, until my dad tipped me off a few years ago)….

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