Mathematics education is controversial. Students from the United States do now fare well, on average, when compared to students on international assessments. Some argue that when you control for poverty and for the fact that all nations do not attempt to educate all children, students do just as well as students from the highest performing countries including Singapore, Korea, Finland and other mathematically gifted nations. The Common Core curriculum was developed in response to these international comparisons. However, these reforms have become politicized. The implementation has not been without its problems. Check out this article from the New York Times. Do you agree or disagree with the premise that teachers from the United States do not deliver instruction in alignment with the reform movement?
I am looking forward to a fantastic year. I hope you will find this website a useful resource for supplementing the things that we learn in class. I also hope that you will use the discussion forum to post things that you find on the web that you think might help your classmates. I am looking for help with keeping this site current and if you would like to volunteer, please leave a comment and I will add you as an administrator of the site.
The Mathematical Sciences in 2025, a new report from the National Research Council, finds that the mathematical sciences are an increasingly integral component of many disciplines—including biology, medicine, the social sciences, business, advanced design, and climate studies. However, the expanding role of the mathematical sciences over the past 15 years has not been matched by a comparable increase in federal funding, and the number of federal agencies that provide significant support for this research is considerably smaller than the number that profit from it. The report also looks at emerging trends in the mathematical sciences, including the impact of research and training on industry, innovation and economic competitiveness, national security, and other areas, and recommends how the National Science Foundation can adjust its portfolio of activities to improve the vitality and impact of the discipline. It identifies a number of ways in which the mathematical sciences community should adapt in order to make the most of emerging opportunities and prepare for changes in academic environments. My seniors are working on their Internal Assessment that requires modeling data mathematically. Here is an article from Nature that describes how mathematical modeling is being used in the treatment and prevention of cancer. While math can often seem theoretical and abstract, it has many practical applications and can make our understanding of the world so much richer. "Einstein once called pure mathematics “the poetry of logical ideas”. It is a poetry that has allowed astronomers to understand the movement of planets, and it has shaped our understanding of the physical world around us. Now it is set to reshape our view of cancer. From speeding up clinical trials to predicting cellular mutation and evolution, mathematical models are helping to transform fundamental ideas underlying the disease." An interesting article in the New York Times discusses how measures of intelligence can be affected by invoking stereotypes. To me it is interesting that intelligence is fluid and influenced by context, something that should be important to students and to educators alike. Here is the link.
Here is a link to a website with some stunning fractal art. If you scroll all the way down there are links to more galleries and to a free software program that you can download to create your own fractals. There is also a link to tutorials on altering your images though I am certain it would take a lot of time to learn. Below are a few of the images from smashingmagazine.
Mathematics applied to the modeling of diseases - glaucoma in this case
Econophysics!!! Who knew? Illusions - Scientific American Mind. This is a fascinating magazine. Here is an article about the mathematics of the electoral college. Measuring Twitter The same author, Steven Strogatz, writes about the number phi which fascinated the ancient Greek mathematicians. There are great diagrams of pentagons and pentagrams in which phi was first discovered. At the bottom of the article are some very interesting links, including one about whether plants know math. It would be great if you could investigate phi using the online software, Geogebra. There is a link to this on the links page.
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Sandi YoderI have been a teacher for 27 years, 14 of which have been in the Campbell High School IB program. Archives
August 2014
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