There’s a growing interest out in the world in making cool things, particularly with technology. Commonly called the “maker movement,” this trend has its roots in tinkering with technology and computing in ways that move the creation of things out of the hands of manufacturers and into the hands of real people. There is a … Continue reading
Last week, Karen Young stopped by this blog and made a comment that led to a great discussion that has taught me a lot, so I decided to pull it out and capture it in this post. First, she said in the first comment on this post: As a kid I could do math in … Continue reading
This week’s in Liberation Math, we’ll be analyzing memories using a method known as memory-work, which you can read more about in last week’s readings. In the in-person class, we’ll be doing memory work, as well as debriefing the first week and figuring out what may need to be changed about the course. The readings … Continue reading
I’ve been reading Elizabeth Ellsworth’s article “Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy.” This paper is about Ellsworth’s experiences teaching a course called “Media and Anti-Racist Pedagogies” in 1988 at UW-Madison. Ellsworth says, about the role of dialogue in critical education, “Through dialogue, a classroom can be made into … Continue reading
When I was an undergraduate and a graduate student, I used to hate taking classes. Classes were generally mind-numbingly boring. When I was doing graduate coursework, I played a game of hangman during class in which I got to put in a new body part every time a certain number of minutes passed. It wasn’t … Continue reading
On the recommendation of Jesse Stommel, I’m reading this paper about grading student writing by Peter Elbow, and I’m trying to figure out what it might say about my own grading practices. First, let me say that that the problems of grading writing may be qualitatively different that the problems of grading mathematics. Mathematics has … Continue reading
Yesterday, I was sitting in a talk at the Joint Math Meetings, and someone made the comment that the Common Core State Standards to not support quantitative literacy. The comment hooked something in me. Was it true? How might the CCSS fail to support quantitative literacy? What is quantitative literacy anyway? And what does the … Continue reading
Today I broke. I started the day exhausted. I’m at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego, staying up way to late. As the conference goes on, I feel less like a mathematician and more like a sociologist. I’m also participating in #moocmooc, the meta MOOC. I really only did it on a whim, a … Continue reading
I just went to a talk by Don Saari here at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego, and the first 3 minutes blew my mind by connecting the mathematics to the things I’ve been thinking about in #moocmooc, the MOOC about MOOCs. Saari’s point was that we often used a reductionist method to solve … Continue reading
First, take a look at a snapshot of the data and graph for Sunday, the first day of #moocmooc. Then the Monday data. You can also see the two days together. The first thing to notice is that both days display a very clear power law. This is not surprising, as power laws are expected … Continue reading
Liberation Math 