I am excited to host the 49th Math Teachers at Play Blog Carnival this week! Did you know April is Math Awareness Month? That makes it a great time to learn more about the amazing thing all of these mathematicians are doing!
Since it is the 49th Carnival, here are some fun facts about the number 49 …
Profound Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics (PUFM) is a phrase coined by Liping Ma in her landmark book, Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics, to describe the deep, broad, and thorough understanding exhibited by several of the Chinese teachers she interviewed.
The Chinese teachers with PUFM didn’t get it automatically. It grew over many years of teaching several levels of elementary math and of studying their textbooks and teaching materials. They met weekly in teaching research groups to learn from each other’s experience, to find multiple ways to solve problems, and to broaden their mathematical understanding.
More than eight years ago, a group of homeschooling friends started a Yahoo “teaching research group” to discuss math in hope of deepening our own understanding and learning to better help our students. We had a good time, but the busy-ness of everyday life eventually won out. The group has mostly disbanded, though the archives remain. Now I’d like to bring that study to my blog, bit by bit, updated with things I’ve learned in the years since.
photo by puuikibeach via flickr
Our homeschool co-op held an end-of-semester assembly. Each class was supposed to demonstrate something they had learned. I planned to set up a static display showing some of our projects, like the fractal pop-up card and the game of Nim, but the students voted to do a skit based on the logic puzzles of Raymond Smullyan.
We had a small class (only four students), but you can easily divide up the lines make room for more players. We created signs from half-sheets of poster board with each native’s line on front and whether she was a knight or knave on the flip side. In the course of a skit, there isn’t enough time to really think through the puzzles, so the audience had to vote based on first impressions — which gave us a fair showing of all opinions on each puzzle.
Vi Hart repents with an update to her last video: “Take that, mathematics!”
Albert Einstein’s birthday was a couple of weeks ago, but today we have a belated celebration. MinutePhysics has finally finished its series on Einstein’s “wonder year” discoveries of 1905. In the last video, we began learning about the Special Theory of Relativity. This time, we find out how that theory leads to the most famous equation in the world…
photo by jaycoxfilm via flickr
Blog renovations are nearly complete, including an overhaul to the Math Teachers at Play blog carnival. The MTaP carnival is a monthly collection of tips, tidbits, games, and activities for students and teachers of preschool through pre-college mathematics. It’s not just for “math teachers”! We welcome entries from parents, students, teachers, homeschoolers, and just plain folks. If you like to learn new things and play around with ideas, you are sure to find something of interest.
We will be publishing MTaP during the second full (Monday-Friday) week of each month, with the exact day of publication during that week left to the host blogger’s discretion. For more information, check out:
Photo by Bob Jagendorf via flickr.
The blog carnival website has been unreliable for months now, and it’s high time we came up with another way for you to submit your posts to the Math Teachers at Play blog carnival. So when I saw the snazzy new Carnival of Mathematics submission form, I knew I had to learn to use Google Docs.
In 1905, when he was 26 years old, Albert Einstein rocked the scientific world with a series of papers that changed our understanding of the nature of the universe. At MinutePhysics, the celebration continues:
Someone mentioned one of my old books on the Living Math forum, which made me curious how the used copies were doing at Amazon.com. These are simple little books, 100 loose pages comb-bound together. I have seen ridiculous prices before, but this one takes the cake.
Thankfully, there are a few used book dealers with more sense, or at least with more reasonable computer-automated pricing routines.
I am still at work revising (and greatly expanding) the old books so I can publish new editions. If you haven’t voted yet in my “What Do You Want from a Math Book?” survey, I’d love to hear your opinion!
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 