Month: July 2017
Keeping an Eye out for Ableism
I have a prosthetic eye. I have had it since I was about a year old, before I could speak. I don’t know what life would be like without it. More importantly, I ...
Number values and multiple representations
One of the questions my mind keeps returning to is: What is a number? I don’t mean this in a high-level set theory way. I’m not talking about aleph-...
Speaking English vs Speaking Math
One of the challenges that I see with students learning mathematics is their confusion with what qualifies as the content of mathematics and the language of mat...
Enough is Enough: The Hoarding of the Ultrarich
Many years ago, I saw a documentary on a tribe somewhere in the third world. This tribe’s diet relied heavily on taro roots, a vegetable similar to a potato. Af...
Fat Jokes about People We Dislike are Still Fat Jokes
Last weekend, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had a Marie Antoinette moment: Having closed the state’s beaches to the general population, he and his family r...
Three and a half methods for finding square roots
The easiest way to find a square root in this technological age is to use a calculator. That’s a fine method if what you want to do is simply calculate a ...
Why We’re all Fragile Snowflakes
I’m a fragile snowflake. So are you. I don’t mean this ironically, and I don’t mean it in the same sense as “We’re all racist.” I mean that, in the eyes of some...
De Gua and the Pythagoreans
The Pythagorean Theorem states that, given a right triangle, the areas of squares placed along the two legs will have the same area as a square placed on the hy...