Archive for: October 2008

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Infinite Pretzel photo graph by oskay

A concerned teacher asked:

I have a senior girl who, though smart, has math phobia, poor background (her school was art-centered, not math) and hypersensitivity to criticism.

 

 What can I do to help her learn her math facts?  She has no mental math curiosity and of course feels inadequate in this area.

Professor Humunculus replies:

I’ve got to tell you that I could have been that student. As frequent readers of the Math Mojo Chronicles know, I didn’t learn any math (I couldn’t even do long division) until I was deep into my thirties. I was always more “right-brained” than left. I learned math through magic (I am a professional magician). 

Now I get to really appreciate certain things about art much more, since I have a better mathematical feel for them. It doesn’t take much to develop, either. It’s not like you have to be a “math freak” to appreciate the beauty of math. 

Look into some of these things:

Tangrams, Polyominoes, Tessellations, Fractals, drawing pictures ore making sculptures of figurate numbers or geometric shapes, the mathematics of origami, Anamorphic art (the math of perspective-drawing), math in the art of M.C. Escher, Salvadore Dali (His Crucifixion of Christ, entitled “Corpus Hypercubus” is a an artistic version of a hypercube  a mathematical fours-pace object) , books by Martin Gardner, like Fractal Music, Hypercards and More…,  From One to Zero by Georges Ifrah …

And on and on. 

Maybe only one out of all of them will work, but don’t give up. Check out a good library and look through the books, see what looks like it might have a chance. The “recreational math” section (around the 793.7 section in the Dewey Decimal System) should wield something. 

Let me know how you do. 

(If anyone has any other suggestions, please leave it in a comment - It would be cool to get readers to create a huge resource of things they’ve successfully tried with reluctant learners.)

addition 01

I’ve been wanting to do this for so long, and I’m sure many readers have wanted it too - I’m making videos that will help anyone learn to be fast and confident (not to mention amazing) at the basic operations - addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

The first series of lessons will be free, as I learn the software and make them more professional. After that, I’ll offer them as a course for a monthly subscription fee that will be astoundingly cheap. It will come with podcasts, webcasts, tele-seminars, tons of downloadable worksheets, progress reports, daily journals, a forum and total e-mail support.

By the end of the course, anybody who puts a bit of effort into it will be able to freak out any teacher, job-interviewer, college entrance examiner, or basically anyone with their calculating abilities.

And I guarantee that you won’t have a second of confusion with any of the methods if you follow them from the beginning. All of the addition and subtraction lessons will be abled to be mastered by just about any second-grader, and many first-graders (or even younger). 

The video you are about to watch is not even the beginning. I’ll be pointing you to even easier lessons for toddlers. But this video is a good place to get a feeling for what things are going to be like. 

Remember, this is just the first draft, as I learn the new software (Wacom Graphics Tablet, iShowU video screencapture, iMovie 8, etc.) Thank God it’s on a Mac, so the learning curve will not be too steep!

Before I clean up the drafts, I’ll make sure I put up a video every few days, so in a short time you’ll be able to long rows of many column in your head, faster than someone else with paper and pencil, and more accurately. 

OK, go have fun with the video. It’s about 12 minutes long. The ones in the future will be shorter. 

And please -  leave a comment. If I don’t hear from anyone, I’ll think nobody wants to learn this stuff, and I’ll have to turn my attention elsewhere. But it would be a shame not to offer this to people, because it’s so easy and fun, and it will give you a huge advantage over anyone who can’t do it.