“I hate fractions.”
“They probably hate you, too. The question is, which one of you will be master.”
— Jonathan, jd2718
“I hate fractions”
Quotations XXIV: Probability
[Photo by Micah Sittig.]
I used to fill the margins of my math newsletter with quotations and tidbits of math history. Here are some quotes from the July/August 1999 issue on probability, along with a few others I’ve stumbled on while browsing the internet.
No knowledge of probabilities helps us to know what conclusions are true. There is no direct relation between the truth of a proposition and its probability.
The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.
What a Teacher Wants To Hear
I finally get it — you don’t have to worry about memorizing a bunch of formulas if you just understand where they come from. You can always figure them out again.
— unidentified student in Doug’s class
from the comments on Kate’s post Formulas? What Formulas?
Quotable: Teaching
Teaching any subject has a funny way of educating the teacher at least as much as the student.
— Chris Birk
How I Became a Better Writer Thanks to Distracted, Hungover College Kids
We all know it already, but I like the way he said it, and the blog post is worth reading. I wish this guy was teaching my college kids. Heck, my college kids wish he was teaching them — or at least, they wish that their teachers valued tight writing and would “coat undergraduate papers in ink.”
Math Teachers at Play #24
[Photo by internets_dairy.]
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. Let’s start the mathematical fun with an arithmetic card game in honor of our 24th edition and a few number puzzles:
Quotable: Make Them Laugh
You have to make them laugh. You must never underestimate the power of laughing in a maths classroom.
— Carol Roberts
quoted in Laughing lesson Adult learning
Or, as Donald O’Conner put it:
I think this is my biggest failing as a teacher: I am too much the straight man.
Quotable: Problem Solving
I do my best to make my students think, but they still try to become good little algorithm followers.
Quotable: College Majors
Discovered this in my blog reader this morning, and I thought you would enjoy it, too.
[Note: Stu is not the person’s real name, but is short for “student.”]
Stu came to my office looking for a new major. Stu is bad at math and can’t handle the math sequence required of business majors. So Stu was wondering what majors require the lowest level math sequence that counts towards graduation.
I listed a few.
Stu was disappointed. Stu pointed out that you don’t usually think about people in those fields as making a lot of money. Stu lamented that everything that is in demand requires math.
— Rudbeckia Hirta
Learning Curves blog
Quotable: Politics
“Let’s give the governor a break,” says Williams College mathematician Edward Burger. “If nothing else, he’s encouraging math education.”
— Carl Bialik
Coincidental Obscenity Deemed Extremely Dubious
Math Teachers at Play #5
[Photo by Alex Kehr.]
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. Let the mathematical fun begin…
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 