Tom has a new post on his Teaching Mathematics blog: Lagrange Multipliers – A Historical Approach? Tom riffs off of a (not uncommon) poor 1960’s undergraduate lecture he had, on the method of Lagrange multipliers. Please support Tom’s blog and check it out.
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This blog is fuelled, obviously, by annoyance. There are the large annoyances, such as ACARA and VCAA and VIT, and sundry medium-sized annoyances. Seven hundred blog posts, and counting, is a lot of being annoyed. Then there are the small annoyances, and this post is about, pun intended, a small annoyance: subscripts. Continue reading “Substandard”
Tom has a new post on his Teaching Mathematics blog: Introducing Negative Numbers. Amongst other things, Tom suggests that Europeans eventually accepted this mathematical magic because of the genius and/or stubbornness of accountants. Please support Tom’s blog and check it out.
Continue reading “Tom’s Latest Post: Introducing Negative Numbers”
This post is about Dallas, which, it must be noted, is one of the most sterile, soulless cities in existence. As such, it is obligatory to begin with the excellent Dallas, Texas performed by the very excellent Austin Lounge Lizards:
On with the post.
We had thought of writing further on California’s recent foot shooting, of screwing up mathematics for everyone in the name of equity. And then came the story of Cambridge, Massachusetts schools killing off early algebra for everyone in the name of equity. But it is all so painfully stupid, and familiar, nothing much needs to be said; yelling “Harrison Bergeron” pretty much covers it. While reading about all this stupidity, however, we came upon a report suggesting that Dallas was doing it right, or at least a hell of a lot righter. Continue reading “Goin’ Back to Dallas, Texas”
It’s time for yet another review of education. This one, being conducted by Victoria’s Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues Committee, will look into “trends in student learning outcomes and student wellbeing in Victoria’s state education system following the COVID-19 pandemic”. The terms of reference and a video are below, and submissions can be made here. Continue reading “An Education Review: The State of the State”
Last week, the Federal Minister for Education, Jason Clare released Strong Beginnings, his remarkable report designed to shake up initial teacher education. We really want to write about the report but we have this old-fashioned idea of reading things before writing about them, and we simply haven’t had the time. We haven’t even had the time to read properly the many opinion pieces on Clare’s report.* So for now, making a couple quick points and directing readers to Greg Ashman will have to suffice. Continue reading “I Can See Clarely Now the Brain is Gone”
Tom has a new post on his Teaching Mathematics blog, on Exploratory Data Analysis. Please check it out, and support Tom while he gets going. Continue reading “Tom’s New Post: Exploratory Data Analysis”
Terry Mills has made it clear, many times, that he dislikes multiple choice questions. Now, on Tom Peachey’s new blog, Terry has a post to discuss a suggested variation of MCQs. Continue reading “Terry Mills on a Variation on Multiple Choice Questions”
A couple days ago there was an article in the SMH, titled,
Bad with numbers? You might have maths anxiety
Yeah, maybe. Or maybe you just suck at maths. It’s a conundrum.
Continue reading “Maths Anxiety Is Not a Thing, But Let’s Talk About It Anyway”
On occasion, I get objections to the nastiness of this blog: “Why can’t you be nicer?”, and so forth. The answer is that I can’t because I can’t: my blog is fuelled by my disgust and anger at the perversion of mathematics education, and of education in general, and of our entire culture. That’s the way it is. But there is a solution: have someone else be nice for me. Continue reading “Yes More Mr. Nice Guy: Tom Peachey’s New Blog”