December 2009

News/Events

December 12, 1:00pm – 10:00pm – Holiday Christmas Card Crop

December 23 – January 4, 2010 – Closed for the Holidays. Have a great Holiday!

Happy December Birthday to Jacob, Scott, Megan, Zach, Tyler, Katherine, Bridget, William, and Ted!

Spin and Win Bonus! Students who complete 3 or more pages in December or January get to spin the wheel for an extra prize like hot cocoa, a game or funny putty. And, kids who  answer the “Question of the Day” also get a chance to spin for a bonus.

5 Part Series: Myths That Can Cause Math Anxiety
Myth #1: Aptitude for Math is Inborn

This belief is the most natural in the world. After all, some people just are more talented at some things (music and athletics come to mind) and to some degree it seems that these talents must be inborn. Indeed, as in any other field of human endeavor, mathematics has had its share of prodigies. Karl Gauss helped his father with bookkeeping as a small child, and the Indian mathematician Ramanujan discovered deep results in mathematics with little formal training. It is easy for students to believe that doing math requires a math brain, one in particular which they have not got.

But consider: to generalize from “three spoons, three rocks, three flowers” – to the number “three” – is an extraordinary feat of abstraction, yet every one of us accomplished this when we were mere toddlers! Mathematics is indeed inborn, but it is inborn in all of us. It is a human trait, shared by the entire race. Reasoning with abstract ideas is the province of every child, every woman, every man. Having a special genetic make-up is no more necessary for success in this activity than being Mozart is necessary to humming a tune.

Ask your math teacher or professor if he or she became a mathematician in consequence of having a special brain. (Be sure to keep a straight face when you do this.) Almost certainly, after the laughter has subsided, it will turn out that a parent or teacher was responsible for helping your instructor discover the beauty in mathematics, and the rewards it holds for the student – and decidedly not a special brain.

Tips & Techniques: Number Sense

Here are a variety of skills that exercise and enhance Number Sense for students at different levels of ability:

Level 1: Sometimes it is faster and easier to solve math problems using Number Sense, as opposed to doing so algorithmically.
For instance, since 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 = 55,
what is 2 + 4 + 6 + 8 + 10 + 12 + 14 + 16 + 18 + 20?

Level 2: An important thing to understand when developing Number Sense is that mathematical terms have very concrete, specific definitions. While a thesaurus will most likely list the word “probability” as a synonym of the word “odds,” in math, the two concepts, though related, have their own separate definitions. As probability is the ratio of the “number of ways to win” to the “total number of ways things can happen,” odds are defined as the ratio of the “number of ways to win” to the “number of ways to lose.”
With this in mind, if the probability of winning a certain game is 2 to 3,
what are the odds of winning the game?

Level 3: Most of the time, when we consider the concept of absolute value from a geometric perspective, we think of it one-dimensionally, that is, a number’s absolute value is a number’s distance from 0 along a given number line. Absolute value, however, also pertains to points on a two-dimensional plane or even in a three-dimensional space. A single point’s absolute value can thus be defined as the distance of the point from the origin (0,0) on a two-dimensional plane and (0,0,0) on a three-dimensional plane.
Given this, what is the absolute value of the point with coordinates (5,12)?

Math Matters

When we want to know what time it is, reaching for a watch or a clock is second nature. Before the advent of mechanical clocks, however, people relied on other methods, like the sundial, which used the position of the sun in the sky to measure time. The oldest sundials date as far back as 3500 BC, and they have been used throughout ancient and modern times.

The basic principle behind a sundial’s functionality is that the shadow of a fixed object changes throughout the course of the day as the Earth rotates on its axis and the sun appears to move across the sky. The first sundials were essentially tall fixed objects (now referred to as the sundial’s gnomon) such as the Ancient Egyptian obelisks. Later on, the addition of marked dial faces made tracking shadows more accurate by quantifying them.

The Earth is tilted as it both rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun. Because of this, the shadows cast by the gnomon at a given time vary from day-to-day. For a more accurate dundial, gnomons were tilted to align with the Earth’s axis, that is, pointing towards true north (for  those in the northern hemisphere) or true south (for those in the southern hemisphere).

Discrepancies exist between clock time and apparent solar tim (time as measured on sundials). Due to a combination of the elliptical shape of the Earth’s orbit (as opposed to a perfect circle) and the Earth’s tilted position, the sun’s position in the sky is subsequently irregular and affects the time presented on the sundial. The difference between these two times (known as the equation of time) varies throughout the course of the year as the Earth’s position relative to the sun changes.

Student of the Month

Diamond Goodman