One word is being scapegoated for student misunderstanding. A recent trend in mathematics education is the idea that we should never, ever say the word “cancel”. The argument for the prosecution is reasonable, and I will lay it out first. But I think the problem isn’t the word itself, but rather how we approach language…
Author: Clio
Non-Binary “They” and Style Guides
In this article, I will summarize the advice offered in modern style guides regarding the use of “they” in the singular. First, though, I’ll provide some background. Background I grew up on Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, which clearly forbids using “they” in the singular. In fact, for those cases where we don’t know…
Ten Influential Albums
Last week I was finally tagged in one of those items: “Post a _____ every day for _____ days, without comment.” In this case, it was “Post an influential album every day for ten days, then tag someone else.” Right off the bat, by the way, I’m not tagging anyone else. Anyone who wants to…
Operations on Fractions
A tale of carts and horses. My child is in fifth grade. Last Friday, we received the second volume of his mathematics workbook. It starts with multiplication of fractions; the next chapter is division of fractions. Addition (and subtraction) of fractions with different denominators is in the first volume. I believe this order persists partly…
Witches, Candy, Monkeys, and Math
Mathematics isn’t about finding answers. It’s about asking questions. As a mathematician, here’s a question I usually find boring: What’s the answer? Consider this manifestation of a sort of meme that wanders the internet: The most likely intended answer is 73, just to get that out of the way. I’ll call this “Witch”. This is…
Talking Honestly About Genitals
Cisgender folks, we need to talk about language again. I’ll be talking about genitals, so some may consider this essay not safe for work (NSFW). The other day, I was writing a comparison between home-made face masks (low effectiveness against COVID-19) and penile condoms (high effectiveness against pregnancy and STD transfer). What struck me is…
Race and Class Privilege in the Age of COVID-19
Madonna recently referred to the COVID-19 pandemic as “the great equalizer”. In the sense that any infection itself doesn’t care about wealth, ethnicity, or background, she’s right. But the harsh reality is that our US culture is deeply steeped in inequities that impact our experiences, including during times of crisis like this. Both the mainstream news…
Adding Fractions: The Common Error
This is one of the most common mistakes students make when adding fractions: \[\frac34 + \frac67=\frac9{11}\] For a long time, I thought that students did this solely based on confusion with multiplication. While we teach addition of integers before multiplication, addition of fractions is a more complicated process. To multiply fractions, multiply the numerators and…
white paint
i covered my canvas with seventeen layers of white paint, one for each time i lost my purity like a picture of Dorian Gray, in reverse, a testament to my slow corruption into adulthood some dreams are shattered all at once, some are left intact, but mine were stripped from me, like seventeen layers of…
Mathematics and Trauma
I teach two sections of Honors Algebra II and two sections of Algebra II. Today, I introduced the concept of finding roots of rational functions. I did this with a discovery-based task. The student response to the task contained a lot of learning for me, and not just in the form of what they wrote…