Tag Archives: Constructions

The Wavy Wavy Bridge

At the 2013 Baltimore Regional NCTM Meeting, I gave a presentation on Picturing Functions and Functions of Pictures. In the description of my presentation I’d promised to show how to use Sketchpad to create special effects, so when it came time to prepare, I figured I needed to deliver on my promise. So I wrote a … Continue Reading ››

Collaborating on an Extension to a Little-Known Theorem

[Today's post is from Steven Fuchs, with whom I recently corresponded and whose enthusiasm was sufficiently infectious that I pressed him to share it here. --Scott]

One day late last spring, while teaching at St. Thomas High School in Houston, I noticed in a book a figure demonstrating Monge’s Theorem. (Don't look this up … Continue Reading ››

What Does Rowing Have to Do with Teaching Mathematics?

DSC_5782
Harry congratulates a rower after sweeping Yale for his last time.
Harry Parker died this summer, two weeks after coaching the Harvard rowing team to yet another sweep of all four races (varsity, JV, freshmen, and spares) against Yale and two days after accompanying his 1980 Olympic … Continue Reading ››

Exploring Conic Sections with Sketchpad

As a student, I didn’t place conic sections on my list of favorite high school topics. The standard textbook treatment of the ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola seemed uninspired. There were messy algebraic equations with multiple square roots. There was lots of terminology. Drawing a conic meant plotting several points on graph paper and connecting them with … Continue Reading ››

Branding isn’t about math. Are you sure about that?

At around Pi-hour on Friday afternoon we successfully launched our new website. The night before (the night of the big storm for Bay Area folks), Andres and I were out with a dear former colleague and I mentioned I was going to blog about our new branding, new website, and new name. She said, “You … Continue Reading ››

Writing Mathematics with Sketchpad

In a recent blog post, Karen Coe referred to Conrad Wolfram’s opinion that programming is to mathematics what composition is to English. I’ve taught programming and written a lot of Sketchpad code, and I appreciate Wolfram’s analogy. In English class, students read books, poems, short stories, essays, and articles—but to gain a deep appreciation for … Continue Reading ››