I just read this wonderful interview with Tom Zhang, who made recent, important progress on the Twin Prime conjecture. It’s a strange, quiet interview, and a lovely departure from the world of the fame-obsessed. Another thing I like: he [...]
I was just observing a third grade class learning/reviewing basic fraction to decimal conversion, and I overheard a great remark. A girl, reading a word problem, said to her table [...]
Reading an Alfie Kohn’s article on what kids learn from failure made me think of the most common question I hear from teachers about the Common Core Practices: “How can I [...]
Those who believe the Common Core Standards are a good thing should take notice. The next year or two will probably make or break them, and the criticism is already starting to mount. This matters. Reforms only work when the people who [...]
When I try to describe great teaching, I notice a certain phrase pops out of my mouth again and again. Productively stuck. As in, the goal of the teacher is to get her students productively stuck as soon as possible. As in, we want to hook [...]
It’s happened to every teacher. It’s Thursday, but your students don’t seem to remember Wednesday or Tuesday, and you’ve got three times as much material to cover if there’s any chance of Friday’s lesson working. Finally, you [...]
When Stephen Colbert introduced the word truthiness on his show, he told us to trust our guts. That’s where the truth comes from, ladies and gentlemen: in the gut. Do you know [...]
I recently posted this interesting inversion problem: The question is this: in mod n, how many functions f(x)= ax +b are their own inverses? For example, the function f(x) = 5x + 2, applied twice in mod 12, is equal to the identity. It’s [...]
I’ve been exploring a new problem with a couple of students recently that I find incredibly compelling, and I thought I’d mention it here. The main idea is looking at the behavior of functions of the form f(x) = ax + b in various mods. [...]
Math makes sense. Not only to mathematicians, it turns out. Math just makes sense. It’s internally coherent, and shows you so when probed. All the rules in math that seem like “just because”–you can think of them probably pretty [...]
These are exciting times at Math for Love! Our Teacher Circles have been seeing great results, and we’re gearing up for our spring session. Meanwhile, the Julia Robinson Festival is coming up on April 28, and we’ve already got 158 kids [...]
There has been considerable backlash against processed food products in the last few years, and for good reason. A slew of health problems implicate what we eat, and processed [...]
Get tons of free content, like our Games to Play at Home packet, puzzles, lessons, and more!