In the summer of ’76, my family–my father, mother, older brother, and myself–travelled from Michigan to Alaska and back by car. Our family station wagon started out towing our trailer, which is where we slept, and where my parents cooked our meals. On the side of trailer, my father had painted a map of North…
Author: Clio
Unwrapped Candy
on the coffee table in my grandmother’s house in a depression era green glass bowl on a doily that was handcrafted by my great great aunt: there was a mass of unwrapped peppermints the pillowy kind half crunchy half chewy which had been there long enough that they had grown together inseparable covered with a…
What’s the Deal with Logarithms?
I’m going to talk about logs here. I have more to say later, but this is a basic intro sketch. First I’m going to talk about the stuff of elementary school. When it comes to mathematics, most people find comfort in elementary school mathematics. So, consider the humble number line: We want to move along…
Should People Who Aren’t Nonbinary Use Mx.?
Like most Indo-European languages, English has a lot of gendered words. Most have standard gender neutral alternatives (boy/girl/child, brother/sister/sibling, etc.), and a few do not (Sir/Ma’am, aunt/uncle, niece/nephew, etc.). This article is specifically about Mr./Ms./Mx., but I’ll start with niece/nephew. The nonbinary/genderqueer community has suggested a few gender neutral forms, the most prevalent being “nibling”….
A Hodgepodge of Inconsistencies
Mathematical terminology and notation through a linguistic lens Introduction The first time I attended graduate school was for Linguistics. My first year, I taught English as a Second Language. My most resistant students were Mathematics majors, because many of them held the opinion that mathematics is a universal language. Why bother getting fluent in English?…
Keeping, Changing, Flipping
Consider the following task: \[1.\quad \text{Simplify the expression }\frac{3}{4}\div\frac{2}{5}.\] It is very common for students to struggle with this sort of task. A common teaching approach is “Keep Change Flip,” but too often that’s presented as a mechanical trick without any deeper understanding of why it works. In proper mathematical language, “Keep Change Flip” translates…
Like a Butterfly
lentement, doucement, comme un papillon contre le vent you reminded me to breathe because i’d forgotten i’d inhaled once then held it inside to bound around and pollute my soul i didn’t want to exhale because i was afraid the toxins would strangle the world my father had told me to keep the demons deep…
Reflections on Inverse Function Notation
I was thinking about inverse function notation, and that got me thinking about function notation, and that got me thinking about operations and how meh our notation for mathematical operations is. So, let’s start fresh. We’ll pretend we don’t have any operators, just a bunch of numbers and an equal sign. We need to make…
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the king cat on thirteen eight three nine has been prancing towards the old appliance store for so long it feels like he’s always been there his mouth is upside down now but somehow his paint is still as fresh as the twinkle in his eyes before he appeared to strut down woodward in the…
The Citadel IV
I woke up on the floor of the tallest minaret in the citadel. Naked, fetal, confused, hugging my knees as if they were a friend I thought I’d lost. You found me there, staring out the window, looking up at the blue sky. And though you called my name, I did not want to answer….