So if working in radians you hate
(How can 
Make your life simpler now
By just switching to τ
= 6.28318…
—Denise Gaskins
Blog
Happy Tau Day
6/28 is τ Day.
Tau = τ = one turn around the circle = 
How do mathematicians celebrate τ Day?
Protest! Share anti-π propaganda.
And eat two pies…
Math Teachers at Play #39
Welcome to the Math Teachers At Play blog carnival — which is not just for math teachers! If you like to learn new things and play around with ideas, you are sure to find something of interest.
Several of these articles were submitted by the bloggers; others were drawn from my overflowing blog reader. Don’t try to skim everything all at once, but take the time to enjoy browsing. Savor a few posts today, and then come back for another helping tomorrow or next week.
Most of the photos below are from the 2010 MAA Found Math Gallery; click each image for more details. Quotations are from Mike Cook’s Canonical List of Math Jokes.
Let the mathematical fun begin…
Blog Carnival Broken?
It’s been nearly two weeks since the blog carnival website sent me any articles for the MTaP carnival. If you tried to submit a entry for the carnival this week or last, I probably didn’t get it. Feel free to email me directly!
In the meantime, I’ve combed Google Reader and collected a nice assortment of posts for this week’s Math Teachers at Play — but there is still room for more.
Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning via Mario Vittone
Off-topic for a math blog, but vitally important:
- Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning
Sometimes the most common indication that someone is drowning is that they don’t look like they’re drowning. They may just look like they are treading water and looking up at the deck. One way to be sure? Ask them, “Are you alright?” If they can answer at all – they probably are. If they return a blank stare, you may have less than 30 seconds to get to them. And parents — children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why.
- It Doesn’t Have to Be Summer
If something like that seems unlikely to you, then you’d be right. Bucket drownings don’t happen often. But when they do, the parents involved never care how rare the event is for everyone else. Something very similar to the events described above happened just last month in Indiana. There was another bucket drowning reported in Illinois the month before that.
Also worth your time:
Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef
Wow! And to think, I was proud of myself for finishing a crochet afghan. Once.
For More Details
Try It Yourself
Chain several. Leave straight to work in rows, or connect into a loop. Single crochet until your patience runs out, increasing every nth stitch (add an extra sc in the same place). Experiment with different colors and patterns. This pdf will give you more ideas.
The more frequently you increase, the frillier your hyperbolic plane will be, while a less-frequent increase makes it easier for students to see the structure. Daina Taimina recommends a 12:13 ratio (increase after every 12th stitch) for classroom use.
Hat tip: 2010 MAA Found Math Gallery, Week 45, and authentic arts by jenny hoople for the pdf.
Summer Slowdown
It happens this way every summer: I think that when school’s out, I’ll have time to catch up on things. But school is never out, because we’re homeschoolers — and something else always comes up to make us even more busy than normal. This year, an emergency forced dh to move his engineering office from town to home. It’s great to have him close at hand, but spring cleaning has turned into a total house reorganization to make room.
In the meantime, this month’s Math Teachers at Play carnival is coming home to my blog, so I’d better get to work on that. If you would like to share a blog post about learning, teaching, or just playing around with math, I’d love to have you send it in. Just click here and fill out the handy automatic submission form.
Update, July 2011: Niner wrote a blog post on the turtles, with photos. Kitten had one of her babies die (sad!) but the other grew up enough to be released into the woods across the creek.
Math Teachers at Play #38 via Mathematics and Multimedia
Welcome to the May 20, 2011 edition of Math Teachers at Play. Before beginning the carnival, let us have some interesting facts about 38.
- The sum of the squares first three primes
- The number of years it took the Israelites to travel from Kadesh Barnea to the Zered valley in Deuteronomy
- There number of surviving plays written by William Shakespeare
- The atomic number of strontium
- Thirty seven and 38 are the first pair of consecutive positive integers not divisible by any of their digits.
Now, let the carnival begin!
Working on My Let’s Play Math! Books
This blog originally grew out of my books, and now it’s coming full circle: New, expanded editions of my long-out-of-print books are ripening on the vine, growing out of the blog. To bring them to harvest, I’m going to need your help.
The Books
I’m working on the games books first because I think they will be the most helpful supplements to any math program.
- Let’s Play Math! Number Games for All Ages
This book will include games like Tens Concentration and Hit Me, as well as tips for teaching negative numbers, the times table, and more. Never before published, because it was planned as the fifth book in my earlier how-to-teach-homeschool-math series, but my self-publishing experiment ended after book four.
- Gotcha! Strategy Games for Math and Logic
This will include games like Math Club Nim and Avoid Three, as well as a lesson about logic and some Lewis Carroll puzzles. An earlier edition is currently available on Amazon for such an exorbitant price that I can’t recommend it to anyone.
- Others to be announced, if I ever get the first two done…
Math Teachers at Play #37 via Maths Insider
The new Math Teachers at Play blog carnival is ready for your browsing pleasure:
Welcome to the 37th edition of the Math Teachers at Play blog carnival. I’m delighted to host the carnival here this month at Maths Insider!
For those new to the Math Teachers at Play carnival, this carnival celebrates some of the best maths teaching articles written by teachers, parents and bloggers each month. …
In keeping with tradition, I’ve presented a “37″ puzzle and some interesting arithmetic facts about the number 37 below. …
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 