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The origami proof that the square root of 2 is irrational 24 Jul 2013 | 11:43 pm
Start with a single paper square: Fold from upper right to lower left (colors added to both sides of the paper for clarity): Follow up with one more fold: Voila, a proof that the square root of 2 i...
Guess the year of the quote 7 Jul 2013 | 03:49 am
Let’s say plus or minus 5 years: Teaching is more than telling and explaining, and learning is more than imitating and memorizing. During the last 60 years teachers of mathematics have gradually sens...
The difference between game and drill 18 Apr 2013 | 08:08 am
So in my last post I opined the the optimal mathematics game in the Tiny Games spirit should “incidentally have some mathematics in them and are the sorts of games one might play even outside of a mat...
Tiny Games, mathematics edition? 12 Apr 2013 | 07:43 pm
So there’s a Kickstarter project closing today which has me wondering about mathematics potential. Tiny Games: Hundreds of real-world games, inside your phone. The concept here is to have games suited...
Three design puzzles from The Psychology of Arithmetic 2 Apr 2013 | 03:13 am
Edward L. Thorndike’s book The Psychology of Arithmetic (1922) is the earliest I’ve seen containing criticism of the visuals in textbook design. I wanted to share three of the examples. Fig. 47.—Would...
Animated mathematical notation and the genre of the mathematical video 19 Mar 2013 | 08:58 pm
While it is still common (and frankly, necessary) to rail at the limitations of learning mathematics via watching videos, my personal umbrage has more to do with presentation than with educational phi...
What is Algebra? (and why you might have the wrong idea and why it is important) 7 Mar 2013 | 09:35 pm
I’ve been frustrated lately reading definitions of algebra along the lines of this: Look: the mere usage of variables or symbols does not immediately indicate algebra. Compare two ways of writing the ...
Current Kickstarter mathematics projects 6 Mar 2013 | 07:47 pm
Recently a commenter plugged their Kickstarter project, which made me curious how many mathematics-related projects were going on these days. I found 8 currently in progress; as of this writing (2013-...
Inverse problems in education 5 Mar 2013 | 10:21 pm
Forward problems are problems with a well-defined answer: throwing a fair die, what’s the probability of getting a 4? Inverse problems look at data and create what necessarily has uncertainty: looking...
Computer Based Math Redux 15 Feb 2013 | 09:24 pm
I’ve posted before about Conrad Wolfram’s efforts to remove calculation from the curriculum and make everything computer based. There is now a website devoted to the initiative (http://computerbasedma...
