By standard mathematical convention, \(-1^2=-1\). At the same time, students are taught to refer to \(-1\) as a negative number. A friend recently led me to realize that these two conventions are at logical odds with each other, as discussed below. Furthermore, while the first convention is generally taught in high school, the mathematical argument…
Author: Clio
Well… is algebra necessary?
Except for the final grades, I’ve just wrapped up teaching six weeks of credit recovery for Freshman Algebra. It’s tough enough packing nine months’ of material into six weeks, but consider these are the students who didn’t do well enough the first time to get a passing grade (in this case, a C or higher),…
Trick question memes
From time to time, a mathematical question of some sort will make its rounds on Facebook and other social media platforms. For instance, the one making the rounds most recently in my portion of the blogosphere was: \[5 + 5 + 5 – 5 + 5 + 5 – 5 + 5 \cdot 0 =…
Introduction and purpose
As of this summer, the summer of 2012, I am qualified to teach mathematics at the high school level in the state of Michigan. I am expecting to be doing so full-time this fall. I am also qualified to teach English, but so far my major focus has been on mathematics, and that’s also the focus…
Cornerstore Review
Today, we saw CornerStore, a “day in the life” comedy about a party store in Detroit. Based on the trailer, I was expecting something similar to Clerks, perhaps with more violence and less comedy. Having seen it, I do think some comparisons to Clerks are appropriate, but at their hearts, they’re different films. Clerks is focused on…
Dinner at Denny’s
The other night, after shopping at the IKEA in Canton, we (being me, my wife, and our toddler son) stopped for dinner at the local Denny’s. There seemed to be at least one child at every table, no doubt largely because of the policy that children get free meals when accompanied by an adult. Our…
Apple’s man behind the curtain
Even though I’m something of a hippie liberal, I’ve generally avoided Apple products. There was always something Wizard of Oz about their chic, and this year appears to be the year for people to finally look en masse at the man behind the curtain. Consider: In October of last year, iPhone had 4% of the market share…
Why I think the depot needs to go
Few topics related to urban blight will get Detroiters more worked up, both pro and con, than that of the train depot. Once upon a time, it was one of the most beautiful structures in the Midwest, in the country, perhaps in the world. Now, it is a vacant, hulking, rotting, half-looted massive beast of…
On the survival of bookstores
Borders recently went out of business. In the wake of their demise, I saw one op/ed that argued that, for bricks and mortar bookstores (such as Barnes and Noble) to survive, they need to find a way to demonstrate the value they add in making real suggestions. I am in Detroit, close to Ann Arbor,…
On “Nym Wars”
Introduction Google Plus recently sparked off another discussion on the use of pseudonyms on the Internet, this round being dubbed “Nym Wars”. Google’s position is that pseudonyms are unwelcome on their new social network system; Facebook, Google’s obvious most direct competitor, has the same official policy, but is not generally very aggressive about enforcing it….