News: Isnt maths cool
Where's the t?
Once upon a time, I lectured Maths 1A calculus, and when I got to teaching hyperbolic trig functions I put a great deal of effort into making sure they were well-connected to other ideas the students knew. So I listed the properties of ordinary trig functions and alongside I listed the matching properties of hyperbolic trig functions.
Two wrongs make a right
Students make a lot of mistakes when doing their maths, but sometimes they will make two mistakes in such a way that their final answer is still correct. This happened last week with one student quite spectacularly, because his doubly wrong method of doing a particular problem always produces the correct answer.
Maths is not Science
Let me say it again a little more emphatically: Maths is NOT Science. The major difference I want to focus on here is the concept of truth. Things are true in Maths, but they are not in Science.
Quadric Cameo
As I said recently, quadrics hold a special place in my heart and I get excited every time the topic comes around in Maths 1B. Quadrics have so many cool things you can say about them, and are such a great opportunity to talk about the deep connection between algebra and geometry. I personally could teach an entire 12 week course on nothing else. But paradoxically, this is also why I feel a sense of frustration every time the topic comes around in Maths 1B.
My conic likes to hide in boxes
Conics (or conic sections if you like) are very close to my heart. My PhD thesis was about conics and their higher-dimensional relatives, and way back in high school they were one of the bits I particularly loved. So it's no surprise that I get excited each semester when the Maths 1B students study them.
The frustrated cone
If someone asked you what your favourite 3D shape was, what would you say? A cube? A sphere? A dodecahedron?
The sizes of infinity
Last week a student visited the Drop-In Centre to talk about the different sizes of infinity. His lecturer had been talking about the sizes of sets and had made an off-hand comment that there were different sizes of infinite sets, and he wanted to know what the hell that meant.
Conspicuous Pi Absence
The number pi is very cool. Many people say that pi is cool because of all the unexpected places it appears. In fact, they don't just say it's cool, they even go so far as to say that there is some sort of mystical significance in the fact that it appears all over the place.
The cos rule without cos
Ever since I first learned it, I've always loved the cos rule. It says that if a triangle has two sides a and b, with an angle of C between them, then the remaining side c can be found in this way: c2 = a2 + b2 - 2ab cos C.
The Pied Mathematician of Hamelin
Have you ever been in a situation and felt like you were reliving a scene from a book or movie? Well it happened to me the other day when I went to visit my daughter's school. I felt exactly like I was the piper in the Pied Piper of Hamelin, because an ever-growing crowd of children followed me across the oval as I walked in.
