Okay, all you math fans...I put up my first teaching post. If you're a teacher, you'll recognize the need for a good explanation. So very, very, very (did I mention VERY?) many students get this wrong. I'm open to suggestions on improving my style for this project, so please comment (praise or suggestions) here if you feel the urge.
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Advanced High School Math Project
The .999... Posts That Made Me Briefly Famous
My Feeble Attempts at Humor
Other blogs I like
- EvolutionBlog
He writes mostly about evolution, but he's a math guy. - Good Math, Bad Math
Scienceblogs finally has a math guy! - Kung Fu Monkey
A very smart, high-profile screen writer and comic with sensible politics and an amazing ability to rant - Math Spectrometer
My ideas about life, teaching, and politics - Pharyngula
Biology, lefty politics, and strident anti-Intelligent Design
Thanks for your blogging, but please stop using double spaces, it makes text much harder to read. Thanks.
Posted by: Ilya Birman | July 03, 2008 at 02:37 PM
hey. welcome back.
speaking of layout complaints,
the type in the _spectrometer_
is way too small and doesn't size.
anyhow, no doggone math.
_eloquently_ is another story.
never mind that other guy,
i'd like to know how you
lay out the displays ...
i know *i* can't do it ...
Posted by: vlorbik | July 25, 2008 at 02:19 PM
yes, i'm having trouble getting the default fonts right.
by 'laying out the displays', i assume you mean the equations. i cheat. i format them with an equation editor in a word-processing program, then take screen snap-shot, convert it to a jpeg, and upload it to the blog as a picture. cumbersome, but i get the equations to look just how i want them.
Posted by: polymath | July 25, 2008 at 03:32 PM
"...then take screen snap-shot, convert it to a jpeg, and upload it to the blog as a picture."
this sounds like something
i might actually be able
to figure out how to do; thanks.
Posted by: vlorbik | July 29, 2008 at 10:01 AM
Being a math student and math tutor, I agree this is the most common mistake in algebra!! I remember a few years ago in my algebra class, we would occasionally have just-for-fun, one-on-one math races to see who could be the first one to get a math problem done correctly. I lost one of those races because of this common mistake! From that day on I never forgot how to distribute an exponent. :)
I love the explanations in your article. You break it down and look at several different ways to explain it. Great article for those of us needing to break that bad math habit. :)
Posted by: Purple Owl | July 31, 2009 at 03:36 PM
Nice!
PS. I like double spaces after periods. Whatever you do will make someone unhappy, so do what you like best.
Posted by: LSquared | October 19, 2009 at 12:27 PM