So you think you don’t use math on a daily basis? Think again.
You may not be solving for x, and the distance formula may not roll off the tip of your frontal lobe—mainly because you haven’t used it in years and years. But if you can put “parent” among your titles, you do math. I promise.
Just look at a typical day:
Read the rest of my guest post at Math is Not a Four Letter Word. You might be surprised by how much math the average parent does in a day!
By the way, would you like me to guest post at your blog? Or do you know of a blog that I would fit right in with? I’ve got lots of ideas to share with anyone who will listen! And I promise I’m a good guest. I wipe out the sink after I brush my teeth and don’t mind if the cat sleeps on my pillow. Get the details here.
My daughter just bought a hot-pink slap watch. She thinks it’s cool because it’s a slap watch, that’s pink–with tiny Diamonique stones encircling the face.
I think it’s cool because it’s not digital.
Like most middle school kids, my daughter is not so good at reading an analog clock. In fact she resists it like crazy. But today, as I sit in the Philadelphia airport waiting for my 5:55 pm flight to Seattle, I’m thinking about how useful her new watch will be.
Read the rest of my guest post at www.TravelSavvyMom.com. Then share your opinions on digital vs. analog clocks. Which one helps you calculate time fastest?
What’s the one thing most parents have in common? We push our kids. “Eat your veggies.” “Do your homework.” “Unload the dishwasher.” And even though it sounds like nagging, these lessons are the ones that help our kids grow into successful adults.
But when it comes to math, are you doing all that you can to ensure that your child or teen will be successful? Do you even know what those things are? The best advice may actually be surprising.
Turns out, there are a few very simple steps you can take that will make a huge difference in how your child performs in mathematics and perceives his or her math skills.
Are you worried about your child’s math skills? Relax and read the rest of my guest post at Flynn Media.
By the way, would you like me to guest post at your blog? Or do you know of a blog that I would fit right in with? I’ve got lots of ideas to share with anyone who will listen! And I promise I’m a good guest. I wipe out the sink after I brush my teeth and don’t mind if the cat sleeps on my pillow. Get the details here.
I don’t usually post on Sundays, but with Geithner’s debt-ceiling deadline looming on Tuesday, I wanted to share this really great video. Using some math and graphs, the narrator explains the debt, deficit and debt ceiling in ways that even your 4th grader can understand.
It’s a little long — almost 10 minutes — but trust me, it’s not full of the gobbledy-gook that economists are sometimes famous for. You will be smarter after you watch it. Promise.
Questions? Ask them in the comment section. (But please skip the political comments. Math is neither Democrat nor Republican.)
Also, be sure to come back tomorrow for an exciting August announcement!
Okay, so most parents really do understand how to encourage literacy. We read signs, the backs of cereal boxes, the comic section and of course classics like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. But injecting a little everyday math into long summer days can be a bit of a challenge.
Good Morning America to the rescue!
In a regular feature, the morning show brings in a “sneaky teacher” to show parents how to continue learning through July and August. And my good friend and fellow freelance writer, Debbie Abrams Kaplan was featured last week.
It’s a cool video, but unfortunately, I can’t figure out how to embed it. So just click on the picture below to view it. It’s worth the extra step! (Debbie’s kids — and she! — are adorable.)
couple of weeks ago, a fellow freelance writer wrote me about her foray into graduate school. She needed to brush up on some math skills, and she wasn’t sure how. I have a feeling that her questions weren’t unique. Whether you need to learn a little extra to help your kid with his homework or you need to take a math class to further your education, learning math again (or for the first time) can be daunting.
Luckily, my friend and fellow math blogger, Bon Crowder offered to write a guest post on this very topic. I swear, Bon and I were separated at graduation or something, because we approach math education in very similar ways. Plus she’s fun. (See? Math folks aren’t always boring and difficult to understand!)
I wanted to title this “Being a Great Adult Learner.”
But that’s dumb. All adults are great learners. If we weren’t, we’d be stumbling around, bumping into doors, starving and naked. We know how to learn, and the proof is that we’re still alive.
And dressed.
The question is “What makes you learn?”
1) You need confidence.
Confidence involves two things: feeling worthy and knowing you have the ability.
When people feel they’re entitled to something, they’re more likely to feel confident in getting it. Hang around any Best Buy service desk and you’ll see this in action. People say all kinds of strange things when trying to return a broken product, and these things are said with a sense of entitlement. BY GOLLY they’re going to get their way!
So how do you gain worthiness and ability? You’re worthy of it because you already have it. And you’re able to do it because you already do.
You have it all. It’s just hidden behind a wall of words you or someone else (or both) has told you for years. Now’s the time to ignore everybody, even yourself.
Because here’s the gosh-honest truth: There is not a single thing within a mathematician that is not within you.
You’ve done math since you were a kid. Even before you were in school. You knew at a deep level that if there was one toy and there was another kid around, you’d better run like the dickens to get it. There’s no dividing that toy evenly between kids.
You balance your checkbook (or you would be in jail right now), you probably have some rough idea of your gas mileage, and you know that if you have 12 people coming over, you’re going to have to double or triple that recipe for shepherds pie. You know math. Now’s the time to admit it.
So say this every night before your prayers. If you don’t pray at night, say it twice:
I do math. Today I woke up on time because I calculated how long it would take to get dressed. I knew how much money to spend because balanced my checkbook. I figured out how much weight I needed to lose – and I used math to do it.
Modify this statement to fit your lifestyle and run with it. Every night.
2) You need the right environment.
Once you’ve tapped in to the realization that you’re inherently good at math, you need the right learning environment.
This includes location, timing and the other people involved. If you have to drive too far away after working all day and all you get is a lousy quarter-pounder-with-cheese, you’re going to be tired, grumpy and irritable. If your class is full of teenagers fresh out of high school and the professor is 400 years old and believes in death by PowerPoint, things are not going to go well.
How do you know the right environment?
Look at all the learning experiences you’ve had through the years. List out the good ones and the bad ones. And then dig deep – what made the good ones good? Why were the bad ones so detrimental?
Include timing, location, student body, temperature in the room and details of the instructor. List out the attitude of the instructor, his/her teaching style, voice intonations – even how he wrote on the board.
Pick out the deal-breakers and the nice-to-haves and write them on a special piece of paper. This is your official “Environment Requirement” page. Laminate it, put it in Evernote, tatoo it to your bottom – whatever you do to keep it close so you can refer to it often.
How do you make sure your Environment Requirements are honored?
Here’s where that sense of entitlement comes back into play. If your class has a deal-breaker environment element, do something about it. Think, “If this were a faulty remote control that I bought at Best Buy, how would I handle it?”
Ask the instructor to manage the loud students better. Ask building maintenance to change the temp of the room (or bring a sweater). Don’t sign up for a class during a time when you’ll be tired, hungry and irritable.
And if you can’t change the environment – leave. Drop the class. Get your money back.
If it were a crappy remote control, that’s what you’d do, right?
You’re dressed…
And fed. You learn all the time. And you do math.
Now go find a class that fits and have fun!
Bon Crowder publishes www.MathFour.com, a math education site for parents. But that’s not all! Bon has launched a really, really, really cool initiative called Count 10, Read 10. While parents are encouraged to read to their infants, toddlers and preschoolers, we’re rarely encouraged to inject a little bit of math into the day. Bon will show you how. Take a look at her blog for more information on developing math literacy (or numeracy). I’ll be writing about this more in the coming months.
A few years ago, I got this idea that I wanted to learn how to sew. My mother in law bought me a lightweight machine at a yard sale for $10. So I decided it was time to teach myself how to sew. How hard could it be?
Turns it, not so much, when you have the internet at your fingertips. With a few searches, I unearthed great Flickr tutorials for zipper pouches, blog posts with step-by-step instructions on how to make box bags and a really, really amazing month-long series of fat-quarter projects on a blog called Sew, Mama, Sew!
One of my zipper pouches made from ModGirls Sis Boom by Jennifer Paganelli
A fat quarter is a piece of 18″ x 22″ fabric. In most cases, it’s a quarter of a yard, but not cut from one side of the width to the other. And it’s a cheap and easy way to buy those gorgeous designer fabrics, like Amy Butler, Moda and Alexander Henry. This is a big deal, because I was quickly realizing that I’m a fabric addict. The editors and contributors at Sew, Mama, Sew had great projects for fat quarters: purses, journal covers, pin cushions, crochet hook rolls and even fabric boxes. I was in heaven!
When I published Math for Grownupsand learned that a virtual tour would be a great way to promote the book, my first thought was that maybe — just maybe! — I could guest post on Sew, Mama, Sew. Imagine my surprise when the editors there jumped at the chance. I felt like I was one of the cool kids.
And today is the big day. You can read my guest post, “Nothing but Net,” which talks about how we can mentally (and physically) translate 2-dimensional figures into the 3rd dimension. That’s what patterns are, after all. Even if you don’t sew, this skill is a great one to have!
Most math teachers teach that that there’s one process for solving math problems, but this approach just isn’t very practical. Now that you’re a grownup, you can find your own way to the answer. I promise.
Math for Grownups blog readers tend to fall into two camps: grownups who are not parents and really hate math (or think they’re not good at it), and parents who are worried that they’re going to pass along their math anxiety to their kids. And so I thought I’d spend a little bit of time addressing some of the concerns of these parents.
Earlier this week, my friend and fellow freelancer, Debbie Abrams Kaplan forwarded the summary of a new bit of research on kids and math. Debbie is the author of two great blogs: Jersey Kids and Frisco Kids, and she figured that I might find some blog fodder from this study.
Boy did I! A couple of things jumped out at me:
No one has ever studied how the basic math skills of first graders affect their later understanding of math throughout elementary school. (Compare that with the many studies of early reading skills, and this fact will blow your mind, too.)
There are three basic skills that will help first graders become good fifth-grade math students.
I’m going to tell you those skills a little later, but first I want to introduce the concept of numeracy. Quite simply, numeracy is the ability to work with and understand numbers. When children are young, numeracy includes the ability to count, recognize the symbols that we use for numbers (which is akin to learning the alphabet), and even do some very simple operations (like 1 + 1 = 2). For high school students, numeracy includes more complex problem solving skills and properties of real numbers.Among math educators, there are big debates about how we can better teach numeracy. I guess this is like the debates about phonics vs. context support methods in reading education. But now that this study is out, it’s clear parents can help lay a firm foundation for our kids’ later success in math. According to this study, published by a team of University of Missouri psychologists, rising first graders should understand:
Numbers — I’m going to take this to mean whole numbers, since most first graders aren’t very familiar with fractions or decimals.
The quantities that these numbers represent — In other words, kids should be able to match a number with that same number of objects (five fingers, two cats, etc.)
Low-level arithmetic — And I’m guessing researchers mean things like adding and subtracting numbers that are smaller than 10 (excepting problems with negative answers).
If you’re like most parents, this is probably a duh moment. What’s so hard about recognizing whole numbers or understanding what five objects are? But I don’t think many parents spend much time emphasizing these ideas — at least not in the way that we commit to reading to our children every night.So here are a few ways that you can help instill numeracy in your pre- or elementary-school aged children.
Count things. Count everything — like the stairs that your climbing or the cars that pass your house or blocks as you take them out of the box or those adorable little toes!
Have your child count things. You can do this in really simple ways. Ask him to get you five spoons so you can set the table. When she wants some goldfish, tell her she can have 10 (and watch her count them). When you’re planning his birthday party, have him tell you which 10 friends he wants to invite. (Write them down for him, so he has something visual to count.)
Notice numbers. When she’s really tiny, ask her to say the numbers that are on your mailbox or on a license plate. Older kids can name multi-digit numbers, like 157 or 81. (And if you want to really be precise and prep your kid for school, don’t say things like “one hundred and fifty-seven. In math, “and” represents a decimal point, which is something most elementary school teachers will really drive home.)
Teach your child to count backwards. This can be a great way for kids to start understanding subtraction. If you know you have 10 steps in your staircase, count backwards as you go down the stairs. Then count frontwards as you go up!
Start adding and subtracting. Give your child 5 raisins and show her how to “count up” to 7 by adding 2 raisins to the pile. Then as your child eats the raisins one by one, “count down” to find out how many are left.
You don’t need to make a big deal about math. And for goodness sakes, skip the worksheets, flashcards and even video games — unless your kid really loves them. Integrate these basic skills into your daily life, and you’ll see your child’s understanding grow. (And you probably won’t feel so stressed out about it all!)What kinds of things do you do with your young elementary-age kids? Any teachers out there want to share their thoughts with the class? Post in the comments section.
You really don’t have to know or care what “binary trees” are to appreciate Vi Hart’s genius. And I’m so excited to finally introduce you all to her.
Vi calls herself a “recreational mathematician.” In other words, she plays with math, and it’s really amazing stuff. Just a couple of years ago, she graduated from Stony Brook University, with a degree in music. (Her senior project was a seven-movement piece about Harry Potter.) Before that, she got hooked on math when her father took her to a computational geometry conference. (George W. Hartis now chief of content for the soon-to-open Museum of Mathematics in Manhattan.)
In short, she’s not a trained math geek. She just loves math.
She’s also funny and infectious. I dare you to watch this video and not laugh. And nope, you don’t have to know what binary trees are to get the jokes. (Psst, you don’t even have to love math to love Vi.)
I’ll post more of Vi’s awesome videos in weeks to come. Let me know what you think in the comments section!
When I was a camp counselor after my sophomore year of college, I had a standard response to kids who asked, “Do I have to?” Whether they were complaining about sweeping out the cabin or taking a hike, I’d look them in the eye, smile and say, “No. You get to!”
I wasn’t a teacher yet, but I had this instinct to spin complaints into commendations. Sometimes this worked. The hikes were a good time, and even sweeping sometimes ended in fits of laughter or song.
But the more I think about math and grownups, the more I think that this flip response doesn’t apply. I do think math is fun — well, some math. I love proofs, from the two-column geometry proofs that I did in high school to proving properties of our real number system. I also love doing some kinds of algebra, like solving systems of equations with two variables.
But I don’t love all math. Try as I might, probability still screws with my head. And I honestly and truly despise logarithms. (Those are to solve for x, when the variable is an exponent. More than likely, you haven’t seen logarithms in decades.)
The realization that math doesn’t have to be fun really hit home twice this past year. When I wrote my proposal for Math for Grownups, the publisher offered positive feedback, except for one thing. “Don’t focus on the fun of math,” my editor said. “Focus on the fact that we need it.” That was a real wake-up call for me. I couldn’t say to my readers, “You don’t have to do this math; you get to!”
And this spring, I also served as an instructional designer for two online, high school math courses, Algebra II and Probability and Statistics. This meant that I reviewed the lessons, looking carefully at the pedagogy and mathematics. I could tell when I loved the math. I was ready to work every day and genuinely didn’t want to stop until everything was finished. But when I hit a unit that was less engaging for me, I stalled. I looked for anything else I could be doing — laundry, cleaning out my email, visiting my favorite blogs.
I didn’t love all of the math I was doing. Why should I expect that of anyone else?
That’s why I say that math doesn’t have to be your BFF. It’s like making dinner every night. Some people can’t wait to get their hands into some fresh bread dough or chop up onions or heat up the grill. Others are satisfied with take-out. And then there are plenty of us who are very happy somewhere in the middle.
But we’ve all got to eat, whether we love cooking or not. And we’ve all got to do math. You don’t have to love it, but you can learn to tolerate it.
What do you love or hate about math? Share your ideas in the comments section.
Over the last year, I’ve come across lots of great math-related videos, and now that my blog is up and book is out, people are sending me links to many more. I thought Fridays would be a great time to share them. So, welcome to the first edition of Film Fridays!
Today’s little clip comes courtesy of my mother-in-law, who majored in math and then went on to have a seriously incredible career as a sales representative for American Greetings. She uses math like it’s a second language — no big deal, thankyouverymuch. (She also makes the most amazing pies ever.)
Still, this clip is a bit geeky — as many math videos are. What I encourage you to do, though, is find the artistry and magic. There will be no quiz. This is just for fun. (Details are below the clip.)
So while this looks absolutely magical, it really does boil down to some very simple math. The length of the pendulum determines how far it swings, and that in turn determines how many swings (or oscillations) it can complete in a given period of time. In plain English: a short pendulum swings faster than a long one. So the smarty-pants at Harvard built this pendulum based on the design of University of Maryland physics professor, Richard Berg. Here’s the nitty gritty, if you’re interested:
The period of one complete cycle of the dance is 60 seconds. The length of the longest pendulum has been adjusted so that it executes 51 oscillations in this 60 second period. The length of each successive shorter pendulum is carefully adjusted so that it executes one additional oscillation in this period. Thus, the 15th pendulum (shortest) undergoes 65 oscillations.
In other words: Pretty.
I am so excited to show you more videos! I especially can’t wait to introduce you to Vi Hart, who does the most captivating math doodles you can imagine. (Wait a minute, who else does math doodles?) So check in next week. And if you have a video that you want to share, please send me the link: llaing-at-comcast-dot-net.
