I wandered into the Math With Bad Drawings blog via a post at Neatorama pointing out a joking post about math experts splitting a check at a restaurant. The jokes are mostly about stereotypes of how engineers, physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, and economists use math.
The joke is accompanied by his white board drawings of the various professionals and their thoughts about the check. I appreciate that his drawing skills with the white board markers are about the equivalent of mine.
After having read through every one of his posts (he only has about thirty or so, having started in April of this year and not having posted too frequently), I can safely say that I appreciate this Oakland, CA math teacher's blog for a lot of other reasons.
I appreciate it for his analogy of teaching being like throwing fistfuls of sand into the ocean.
I appreciate it for his beautiful explanation (and his wife's and his father's) of why you can't divide by zero.
I appreciate it for his openness in relating a time when he, too, struggled at math - as he knows his students do.
I appreciate his exploration of the failures and successes of teaching - how bad the former feels and how good the latter.
I appreciate his candor and three messages for his students at the end of the year.
And I appreciate him telling me how to play ultimate tic-tac-toe.
2 comments:
I've been looking for why math in particular does this to people. The specificity of it it really there. Best guess I have is the background knowledge problem, but its not a satisfying answer.
Definitely liked ultimate tic-tac-toe. I will have to teach it to the daughters next time they ask to play. Tic-tac-toe is a common distraction at restaurants before food arrives at the table.
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