Tag Archives: math class

Mathematical Notation and Schools – 5

Posted on 2011/06/12 by Bert Speelpenning

The Overloaded Equals Sign: Equivalence In this series about mathematical notation and its impact on the learning of mathematics, the previous post started to look at the overloading of the equals sign – so many different meanings and uses cramped … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Mathematical Notation and Schools – 4

Posted on 2011/06/10 by Bert Speelpenning

The Overloaded Equals Sign: “Do This Now” In this series about mathematical notation and its impact on the learning of mathematics, we’ve looked so far at the raised minus sign for negative numbers, the various ways of denoting multiplication, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Mathematical Notation and Schools – 2

Posted on 2011/05/28 by Bert Speelpenning

Notations For Multiplication In the first part of this series, I looked at the practice in American schools to use a raised minus sign for negative numbers: e.g. ⁻7 for negative seven, in contrast to the “-” in 10 – … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Mathematical Notation and Schools: The Series

Posted on 2011/05/25 by Bert Speelpenning

Here’s a summary of the series (thus far) of posts on mathematical notation, with links. This allows you to read them in order, from oldest to most recent. In this series, I’m investigating variations of standard mathematical notation, with an … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 15 Comments

Mathematical Notation and Schools – 1

Posted on 2011/05/25 by Bert Speelpenning

Notations for negative numbers This blog entry marks the start of a series about mathematical notation and its uses in school.  I intend to look in detail at aspects of the standard mathematical notations, and how these help or hinder … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Groupings, Shopping Lists, and Vectors: The Series

Posted on 2010/09/11 by Bert Speelpenning

This is a series on vector algebra, but it hasn’t wrapped up yet.  Here are the installments as of now: Quantity – Different Kinds of Numbers: Vectors – it really all started with this post.  But I didn’t know it … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

First, Do No Harm

Posted on 2010/04/28 by Bert Speelpenning

Wouldn’t that be a great stricture for Math Education to adopt, just like medical professionals do?  Whatever else you do, make sure you do no harm. You’d think that this would represent a really low standard of math education: that … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Groupings, Shopping Lists, Vectors: part 18

Posted on 2010/01/27 by Bert Speelpenning

If you have read earlier installments of this series – and I know it has gotten long – you may have noticed that very few of the matrices that appeared there have the same number of rows and columns.  A … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Groupings, Shopping Lists, Vectors: part 15

Posted on 2010/01/12 by Bert Speelpenning

This post is  part of a series, starting here, about models and ideas that underlie the rather abstract stuff called vectors and matrices in math textbooks.  In this series, we’ve looked at shopping lists, pricing out orders, weighted averages, perspective … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Groupings, Shopping Lists, Vectors: part 14

Posted on 2010/01/07 by Bert Speelpenning

In the prior parts of this series, I have look at a number of problem situations from which a certain notion of grouping data and organizing data and operating on data arises straightforwardly, a way of grouping data that is … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment