Short and random

[magid]

Lockhart's Lament about mathematics education (long, but worthwhile reading).

New in NYC: the Tree Museum along the Bronx's Grand Concourse.

Mapping potential for urban agriculture, one London area at a time, with "edible maps."

XKCD has let me down: it isn't spelled "cemetary."

Home-made Oreos (or at least, a similar sandwich cookie, though without the characteristic embossing; includes a link to a gluten-free version of the same).

No new fish for me this week: the nor'easter is keeping boats ashore.

If anyone still wants a Dreamwidth code, I've got four available.

Comments

OMG

[gothtique.livejournal.com]

Tree Museum!

I have that song in my head now...
"The took all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum... charge the people a dollar and a half to see 'em. Oh don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got to it gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."

Re: OMG

[magid.livejournal.com]

I so totally suck at lyrics; I hadn't thought of that at all!

I think the plan is to put some of the stories up online, too. But it sounds like a perfect sort of excursion, walking along the Grand Concourse, getting doses of history and science and anthropology.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd like a code!

[magid.livejournal.com]

Yours!

Let me know what username you choose over there?

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Thanks! hrafn over there as well.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

He fixed it! (http://xkcd.com/599/)

[magid.livejournal.com]

Neat-o! Thanks for the heads-up.

[cnoocy]

I do wonder what kind of student-teacher ratio Lockhart has at his school, and whether he's teaching any kids who aren't getting their basic math knowledge at home. It's a lot of work to re-derive the early history of mathematics every time you need to multiply two numbers.

[magid.livejournal.com]

There are at least a couple of elementary math programs that are designed to be exploratory, letting kids work on problems a while and figure things out for themselves. What I particularly like about the one I'm most familiar with is that the main idea in one problem is then rippled through the next problems, taking the concept into different areas, letting kids see the interconnections. The problem is, most elementary school teachers aren't themselves math-knowledgeable outside the rote stuff, so it's harder to find people who will teach this way.

And there's the ever-present question of testing and teaching to it, reinforced by No Child Left Behind, which does the opposite of what it intended: instead of making sure kids know the algebra (or history, or whatever) up to a certain level, the bar is dropped, or the kids are crammed with random stuff that won't stick past the test.

I remember reading a study about using calculators in the classroom. It showed that letting elementary school kids use them meant that kids came up with their own algorithms for multiplication (or whatever) for reasonable numbers, whatever felt reasonable to the kid (whether that's 12 x 12 or something else), because the calculator's slower if the number is one you already know.

I agree it would be interesting to know more specifics about Lockhart's school, but a lot of his indictments seemed far too familiar to one who's worked on math textbooks for more than a decade...

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Lockhart's Lament - wow. I - wow. Yeah.

Sad about the fish - the Monday share happened, although it sounds like it was a near miss. (Cod again, though the whole shares got yellowtail, too.)

[magid.livejournal.com]

Well, they'll tack on a week at the end, so it's not like I won't be fisherated the same amount, in the end. But yeah, I'd rather have fish now!

Did you see the yellowtail? Are they cod-sized-ish?

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Did not see the yellowtail, but I imagine they're similar in size. Our cod this week was 4.5 pounds, a bit smaller than last week.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I didn't weigh the fish last week, not wanting to deal with getting the scale out and potentially covered in fish juice. What did your cod weigh last week?
(Someone even asked me.)

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

We estimate last week's fish was possibly in the 5 pound range, it not really occurring to us to weigh it until it had not only been cooked, but partially eaten, and then divided up into containers of meat, bones, and pan juice. So after weighing all the containers and making a guess as to the amount we had consumed, I think the conclusion was 5-ish pounds. :)

Thus this week the fish was weighed while still intact and raw (and then after being cut into bits, the bits were weighed to try and get at how much mass was meat and how much . . . other stuff: about 50% edible, it seems). We put a plate on the scale, tared it, then added the fish, so no fishy juice on the scale. (Plus also the fish would have drooped off the scale and we wouldn't have gotten an accurate reading.)

[powerfrau.livejournal.com]

Grrrr. Semitary?

[magid.livejournal.com]

Apparently it's been fixed, which is better than most misspellers manage...