the joy of x-steven strogatz

from the nytimes: Steven Strogatz is a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University. In 2007 he received the Communications Award, a lifetime achievement award for the communication of mathematics to the general public. He previously taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received the E.M. Baker Award, an institute-wide teaching prize selected solely by students. “Chaos,” his series of 24 lectures on chaos theory, was filmed and produced in 2008 by The Teaching Company. He is the author, most recently, of “The Calculus of Friendship,” the story of his 30-year correspondence with his high school calculus teacher. In this series, which appears every Monday, he takes readers from the basics of math to the baffling. check out his latest post "the joy of x": he writes-"Algebra, for example, may have once struck you as a dizzying mix of symbols, definitions and procedures, but in the end they all boil down to just two activities — solving for x and working with formulas.

Solving for x is detective work. You’re searching for an unknown number, x. You’ve been handed a few clues about it, either in the form of an equation like 2x + 3 = 7, or, less conveniently, in a convoluted verbal description of it (as in those scary “word problems”). In either case, the goal is to identify x from the information given". it is well worth reading. be well.

twokayten

i trust that all is well. a happy new year to you. it has been six months since i last wrote a sentence in this blog! as you have perhaps surmised, brooklyn is a "black hole" which sucks up everything in sight. smile. to put it mildly, i have been a bit overwhelmed by the responsibilities of family, teaching, research, guidance, and all things brooklyn since my return to nyc in june 2009. prior to my last note i was preparing to attend the 2009 caarms conference at rice university in houston.

rice university, houston texas

on my return to south hadley, ma from houston texas i loaded up my belongings, said my goodbyes

goodbye to south hadley

and headed home to the peoples republic of brooklyn.

welcome home madiba

on my return to mec in july, i was tasked with teaching a course for intermediate algebra students and another one on math for elementary school teachers. the intermediate algebra reminded me of the very real challenges our community faces as we try to widen the circle of literacy. one strategy for dealing with this came to me during my math for elementary school teachers. it was a challenging and wonderful experience and it led me to initiate the development of a medgar evers college math circle. this effort i hope will begin to bear some fruit in few years. thus far we have been able to pilot a small bit of our material at the immaculate heart of mary middle school in brooklyn. the 6th, 7th and 8th graders were very receptive to some of the material presented and my intuition suggests that this type of effort can play a positive role in changing attitudes towards the learning of mathematics among middle and high school students in brooklyn. the goal now is to find some funding for this endeavor. check out the intro lecture. mathcircleinitiative02012010 . another project in which i have been involved is the "free text book movement", the idea is to use technology to ultimately eliminate the cost of the text for college students, in particular the poor one. Here is the goal-this is primarily the work of john velling at brooklyn college and i have been involved small role in aiding the roll out and refinement of this effort. check out an early version of the online calculus text. i used this last semester in my in my precalculus class and i am using it again in both my precalculus and calculus classes. this is the future. folks should also check out this excellent online resource for children. for those of you hooked on the iphone check out this article: algebra comes to the iphone. recently i visited san francisco as part of my efforts on this front. i am part of a small project which is designed to create experiences such as this for our undergraduates.

math@mec in san francisco

at some point i would like this to be a standard part of the experience of our majors at mec. it is important not to be diverted from the task. a recent article questions the efficacy of the “algebra for all” programs. this is a generational project. it's slow tough going. smile and be well.

i'll try to write a bit more frequently this year.