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Monthly Archives: July 2016

Brackets

I had a meeting with an international student in the MLC on Friday who has having a whole lot of language issues in her maths class.
She was from the USA.
Yes, the USA. Her problem wasn’t the everyday English; it was with the different terminologies for mathematical things here compared to her experience where she comes […]

Posted in How people learn (or don't), Thoughts about maths thinking | Tagged |

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TMC16 reflections from someone who wasn’t there

This post is about my response to TMC16.
For the uninitiated, TMC is short for Twitter Math Camp. This is a conference designed by teachers for teachers with teacher speakers, organised through the collective efforts of the Math Twitter Blog-o-Sphere (MTBoS) — a group of people who blog and tweet about their experiences teaching math(s). That […]

Posted in Being a good teacher, Education reading | Tagged , |

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David Butler and the Prisoner of Alhazen

Once upon a time, I did a PhD in projective geometry. It was all about objects called quadrals (a word I made up) – ovals, ovoids, conics, quadrics and their cones – and the lines associated with them – tangents, secants, external lines, generator lines. During the first two years, I did talks about my […]

Posted in Isn't maths cool?, One Hundred Factorial, Thoughts about maths thinking | Tagged , , , |

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Mansplaining

A few months ago, I learned a new word: “mansplaining”. You may have heard it before, but I never had until this year.
The general idea is that very often, a man will explain something to a woman in a way that seems to be based on the assumption that the woman is incapable of understanding […]

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The line at infinity: conics

The story so far
I promised Tina on Twitter that I would write about how the line at infinity relates to conics, and I’ve been doing it in the last two blog posts.
First, I talked about what the line at infinity is. We noticed that a set of parallel lines all share a slope, so we […]

Posted in Isn't maths cool? | Tagged , |

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The line at infinity: coordinates

The story so far
I made a promise to someone on Twitter to talk about how conics relate to the line at infinity, but when I came to do that, I realised it’s a can of worms that will take a few blog posts to untangle. Last time, I talked about how I construct and think […]

Posted in Isn't maths cool? | Tagged , |

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The line at infinity

Why I’m doing this

I foolishly said this on Twitter about a month ago:

@DavidKButlerUoA @MathguyArt on the line at infinity? Tell me about those!
— Tina Cardone (@crstn85) June 14, 2016

At the time I declared this was a bit of a can of worms and I promised to write something and post it later. Well, here it […]

Posted in Isn't maths cool? | Tagged , |

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A Day of Maths 7: Thanks for coming

And there you have it. All my thoughts about the Day of Maths I had in a Year 7 classroom.

The Best! Day! Ever!
Quarter the Cross
The Zero Zeros
Spotless Dice
Mathematical Art Appreciation
Hotel Infinity

Thank you to everyone who has followed my journey all the way here. One thing I find about teaching is that it often leaves me […]

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

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A Day of Maths 6: Hotel Infinity

This post is the sixth in a series about a Maths Day I did in a Year 7 class last week. I’ve talked about my feelings about the day overall, and  all but one of the activities we did: Quarter the Cross, the Zero Zeros, Spotless Dice, and looking at my maths art. In the […]

Posted in Being a good teacher, Isn't maths cool?, Thoughts about maths thinking | Tagged , , |

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A Day of Maths 5: Looking at Maths Art

This is the fifth in a series of posts coming from my Maths Day in a Year 7 classroom. So far I’ve talked about the following:

how awesome the day was
how I implemented Quarter the Cross
the unexpected things that happened with Zero Zeros
how I implemented Spotless Dice

You may be thinking by this stage, “David, how much […]

Posted in Isn't maths cool?, Other MLC stuff, Thoughts about maths thinking | Tagged , |

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