BLOGS WEBSITE

Monthly Archives: August 2013

Technological Excuses

Technology can do a lot to facilitate good learning: Some of the stuff we ask students to do doesn’t really need to happen when they’re all together in the classroom, and technology can make it possible for the students to do these things in other places (such as at home, in Hub Central, on the […]

Posted in Being a good teacher | Tagged , |

Leave a comment

Does it matter that roosters don’t lay eggs?

There is a particularly annoying puzzle that goes something like this:
“A rooster sits on the apex of a barn roof. The roof pitches at an angle of 43 degrees above the horizontal and is made of wood painted red. On the northern side of the roof, there is a large tree which casts a shadow […]

Posted in Being a good teacher, Thoughts about maths thinking | Tagged , , |

Leave a comment

The frustrated cone

If someone asked you what your favourite 3D shape was, what would you say? A cube? A sphere? A dodecahedron?
Well, my favourite 3D shape is the frustrated cone. A frustrated cone is a cone with the pointy bit cut off (some people call it a “conical frustum” or a “truncated cone”, but “frustrated cone” sounds […]

Posted in Isn't maths cool? | Tagged |

Leave a comment

The sizes of infinity

Last week a student visited the Drop-In Centre to talk about the different sizes of infinity. His lecturer had been talking about the sizes of sets and had made an off-hand comment that there were different sizes of infinite sets, and he wanted to know what the hell that meant.
So I explained it. It’s not […]

Posted in Isn't maths cool? | Tagged |

Leave a comment