Why I’m not celebrating Tau Day
Tau day, celebrated on June 28th, is almost upon us again. Last year I had great fun making a video about tau and appeared in national newspapers and on radio and TV. Though I had helped kick off a...
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Cool proof of the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra
Despite being on holiday I can’t resist looking for cool proofs. This one is not so much cool as interesting in a Why-didn’t-I-think-of-that way. The fundamental theorem of algebra — that any...
View ArticleMaths compulsory until age 18
The House of Lords just published a report recommending that students in the UK study mathematics until the age of 18. This recommendation cropped up last year in the Vorderman review. The Lords report...
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Maths projects
TES forum Last week I updated my personal and work web sites for the first time in far too long and I changed the look of this blog. It doesn’t work perfectly yet as some of the colours and spacing are...
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Maths problems tweets
I’m not a big user of twitter as I prefer to read material that has more than 140 characters. Nonetheless, often something interesting appears. Dan Meyer set off an intriguing set of responses to his...
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Estimating large numbers the Fermi way
Enrico Fermi as imagined in the video Here’s a really good introduction to estimating numbers and includes Enrico Fermi‘s famous “How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?” You can see more like this...
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What is the Best Proof of Cauchy’s Integral Theorem?
Today’s post may look as though I’m going all Terry Tao on you with a long post with lots of mathematical symbols. It’s really about the learning and teaching of Cauchy’s integral theorem from...
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Maths predicts – this time movie success
In a previous post I talked about predictions using maths and Nates Silver‘s book on essentially that topic was one of my favourites books of last year. This next one is a bit of fun – predicting...
View ArticleHilbert Hotel Video
Belated Happy New Year! Here’s another of those short educational TED videos. This time on the Hilbert Hotel. (A cartoon Hilbert does seem to make an appearance but it is hard to tell as he isn’t...
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How to get a good degree 3: How to become a straight-A student
How to Become a Straight-A Student Usually I am against books offering general study advice, I favour those that focus on a particular subject. (Which is why I wrote How to Think Like a Mathematician....
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80s rubric
The last post was a monster post. This one is a bit shorter as it exam time at my university so I’m a bit busy. Students these days have it easy with regards to exams. They are given far too much...
View ArticleMinute notes
The main reason for writing these posts is because I am giving a talk about teaching at the British Mathematical Colloquium next week. This has been an opportunity to prepare for the talk by reflecting...
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What goes in the gap?
Lara Alcock wrote about Tilting the Classroom in the London Mathematical Society Newsletter. One of the activities she does that I don’t do but should is what I’ll call What goes in the gap? from her...
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Words into symbols, symbols into words
Mathematicians use a lot of symbols. Everyone knows that. A symbol may represent a simple constant ( is the constant of integration) or represent a collection of difficult concepts ( is a group)....
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Teach the Greek alphabet
Many students don’t know what to call certain Greek symbols. They are happy with common ones like and but show them a or and they get a little shy. This shouldn’t be a surprise but it is just their...
View ArticleJigsaw proofs
Writing a proof is very difficult — even for experts. Here’s an idea that allows students to think about and engage with a proof without starting from nothing. Take a proof and space out separate...
View ArticleBinary marking
An idea recently introduced to me is binary marking. Students receive either a 0 or a 1 for their weekly coursework mark. This makes marking easier — no need to decide if this question is worth 2 or 3...
View ArticleMarks for writing
Writing mathematics clearly is a crucial part of a student’s education. Too often students begin higher education with the misconception that writing mathematics merely involves putting down a sequence...
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Proof: From the particular to the general
A common technique in teaching mathematics is to go from the particular to the general. We can look at a few examples and then state and prove the general result. We can do this for proofs as well....
View ArticleE-assessment
I’ve been attending a conference for the last few days and so didn’t have much time to write a post. I did learn about the e-assessment packages Stack and Numbas. I will definitely be trying these in...
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