I'll be teaching four workshops this summer, in two new locations: Seattle, and Waltham, MA (which is a half-hour West of Boston.) If you've meant to attend my workshops in the past, but couldn't make it to San Francisco, New York, or DC, perhaps these venues are more convenient for you? There will be no… Continue reading Summer Workshops, 2015
Tag: Algebra
Asilomar Report: Think First
I attended the California Math Council meeting last Saturday. This post is a report on one talk I attended. It was given by Scott Farrand, a prof at Cal State University Sacramento. (I also reported on one of his talks last year.)This year's talk was called "Think First", which can be interpreted a few ways,… Continue reading Asilomar Report: Think First
Geometric Series
... geometric in more than one way! Start with a right triangle ∆ABC, with hypotenuse AB = 1, and AC = b.Draw a parallel to AB through C.Draw a circle centered at C, with radius b.Label the intersection of the line and the circle D.Drop a perpendicular from D to line AC, intersecting it at… Continue reading Geometric Series
Make These Designs
Among the activities I have developed, "Make These Designs" is among the most popular. Students enjoy it, and teachers appreciate how it can be used as an engaging introduction to, or interesting review of, an important topic: graphs of linear functions, and the parameters m and b in y=mx+b.When electronic graphing first came onto the… Continue reading Make These Designs
Proportional Relationships
One good thing about the Common Core middle school standards is the emphasis on proportional relationships, and the fact that they are approached in a multidimensional way. In addition to "set up a proportion and solve it", which is probably the most common way to teach this, the standards propose multiple representations and a variety… Continue reading Proportional Relationships
Patterns
A correspondent writes:We emphasize the idea that students should approach problems in multiple ways. This has caused me to wonder about patterns. For example:students might conclude that 3^0=1 because of the pattern 3^4=81, 3^3=27, 3^2=9, 3^1=1orwhen the second difference is constant, students will conclude that the function is quadraticorwhen a function is concave up, the… Continue reading Patterns
Fathom: Free for Now!
See below for a letter from Bill Finzer, the leader of the Fathom team, dated June 15, 2014. Fathom is outstanding software for statistics, but also for basic algebra. If you are not familiar with it, I strongly recommend you check it out. It is free for the duration of this school year.Once you have… Continue reading Fathom: Free for Now!
The Lab Gear Is Back
Doctor Dimension Returns!
In a post a few weeks ago, I told the story of Doctor Dimension, the two-dimensional scientist who spends his fictional life filling two-dimensional containers with two-dimensional liquids, and has been doing this since 1994. In the comments, two different Bay Area math teachers directed me to Water Line, a wonderful Dan Meyer / Desmos… Continue reading Doctor Dimension Returns!
Doctor Dimension
Twenty-some years ago, I started teaching an advanced high school geometry elective class called Space. I offered it every other year until I retired last year. Most of the course was about transformational geometry and symmetry. (That turned out to be excellent preparation for Common Core geometry. I will be presenting and co-presenting four workshops… Continue reading Doctor Dimension
Henri's Math Education Blog 