Sometimes the outtakes are the best part of a movie. As anyone who’s taught a Mathalicious lesson knows, we structure our lessons in acts (see Dan Meyer, This American Life, playwrights, etc.). The goal is to create a narrative that flows so naturally that it seems almost effortless, as though the conversation existed already and [...]

In one Radiolab episode they ponder whether there’s an infinite number of universes. In another whether the body “feels” pain earlier than it should, and in another whether numbers are true. When I tried to play the “Placebo” podcast this morning my computer crashed. Radiolab is the smartest program I know–Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich [...]

An article in this morning’s New York Times explains how after investing $33 million in technology, a school district in Arizona has seen almost no improvement in test scores. Duh. It’s no surprise that we as a society have a sort-of blind faith that technology is able to solve all of our problems. Yet while [...]

First broadcast on WAMU 88.5, August 22, 2011. Click here to listen. In the coming weeks millions of students around the country will head back to school. They’ll buy spiral notebooks and number two pencils. They’ll get locker combinations and class schedules. And they’ll sit in math class, open their textbooks and encounter something like this: [...]

First printed on Valerie Strauss’ Washington Post blog, The Answer Sheet on August 14, 2011. Click here for original. A 2006 New York Times article described a 4-year-old boy who presented with a persistent fever and brown spots on his skin.  Doctors concluded it was leukemia and ordered a painful round of chemotherapy.  It turned out [...]

In a recent blog post, Dan Meyer describes his discomfort with the expression “real-world,” writing I understand what it means. I know it’s code for something that basically everybody understands. But I’m not comfortable with the implication that if the mathematics won’t help you build a deck or make payroll or beat the odds at a card [...]

This dude is strong. No question about it. He can lift very heavy things. Every day he hits the gym, spends an hour or so on the bench, probably another hour doing lat pull-downs.  He may vary it up, doing chest/back on even days, arms/shoulders/legs on odd.  Whatever his routine, clearly it’s working.  And maybe [...]

So that whole “I don’t have kids” remark from the previous post is only partly true.  My neighbors have a 2 year old.  I went to the hospital the night he was born, and I love this child. I miss him when I travel, and I’m just the neighbor.  In part because we’re more or [...]

There was a calculus teacher at my old school who’d apparently get so animated that he had to keep the windows open…in New York City…in February. When a student would finally a-ha on some finer intricacy of differentiation, he’d loosen his collar and bounce around the room beaming, Yes, yes! Do you see that? Isn’t it [...]