"If others would but reflect on mathematical truths as deeply and as continuously as I have, they would make my discoveries." - Carl Friedrich Gauss
January 9, 2016
I thoroughly enjoyed using an activity I created using Desmos Activity Builder over the course of the past couple of days with my precalculus students to help them think in new ways about quadratic functions. These are intelligent people who have graphed plenty of parabolas and solved plenty Read more…
April 3, 2013
I introduced log rules in a novel way in my precalculus class today. As a bit of important background, the idea of logs was not new to these students. We’d done extensive work with logs back in the fall when we were focused on learning Read more…
January 26, 2013
A worksheet which gives algebra or precalculus students practice in reading and applying mathematical definitions and thinking about functions presented in various modes Word version
A PowerPoint presentation on Solving Polynomial Equations by Factoring. (Use PowerPoint’s pen tool on an interactive white board to solve the problems on the screen.)
In her blog post, My Backwards Approach to Inverse Functions, Emily Alman makes an observation that is, I think, vitally important for math teachers to understand: “One problem with algebra is that there is often a disconnect between the meaning/understanding and the computations/doing. We try our darndest to Read more…
July 21, 2012
After re-reading the first chapter of Eli Maor’s e: The Story of a Number, I ended up spending a couple of days creating a GeoGebra applet which I’ve called Napier’s Gift. Given that it’s July, I didn’t have a class to try it out on, Read more…
July 23, 2011
In order to begin learning to use JSXGraph (which also requires that I learn javascript) I created an application in which a line is randomly generated and the user enters what she thinks the equation is. Her equation is then graphed for comparison with the Read more…
