Bring an end to the rationalization madness
In less than a month, we’ll be hosting the one and only James Tanton at our school. We’re so excited! I’m especially excited because he’s totally going to help me rally the troops in this fight: He...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Four ways to compute a probability
I have a guest blog post that appears on the White Group Mathematics blog here. (My first guest post!) Here’s a taste: One thing I love about math, and particularly combinatorics and probability, is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How do you expand √(a+b)?
This is a question that was recently asked on Quora: Is it possible to expand ? it’s easy to expand or or some other but what about aka. Here’s my answer: Just have Wolfram|Alpha do it for you :-). But...
View ArticleGuess who!
In an effort to share more of my resources through this blog, here’s another installment. This time I’m sharing a little worksheet that I created called Guess Who? It’s a short activity–a warm up, or...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Challenge Problems
Want to enrich your Precalculus course with difficult problems? Look no further! I teach a high-octane version of Precalculus to students in our magnet program. Our course, like most Precalculus...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Proving identities – what’s your philosophy?
What happens in your classroom when you give students the following task? Prove . Sometimes the command is Verify or Show instead of Prove, but the intent is the same. Two non-examples Here are two...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Extraneous Solutions – Part 1 of 3?
Disclaimer Within my small inner circle of math teachers, the mystery of extraneous solutions seems to be the issue of the year. I have so much to say on this topic (algebraic, logical, pedagogical,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Extraneous Solutions – Part 2 of 3
Solving an Equation as a Sequence of Equation Replacement Operations Part 1 was so long because I wanted to be extremely thorough and to present things to an audience that perhaps hadn’t thought much...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Area models for multiplication throughout the K-12 curriculum
Let’s take a look at area models, shall we? My thesis today is that area models should be ubiquitous across the entire curriculum because mathematics is a sense making discipline. As math educators, we...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Geometric Proofs of Trigonometric Identities
Sparked by a conversation this past weekend about the usefulness of the half-angle identities, I constructed geometric proofs for and . Since I’ve never seen these anywhere before, I thought I’d share....
View Article