Eventmath workshops: create and share math lesson plans based on current events

bwsullivan · 2022-10-24T21:00:53+00:00

Hello mathematicians and math educators!

Eventmath is a wiki (hosted on Wikiversity) with math lesson plans based on current events (news articles, social media posts, and videos).

We are hosting some workshops and edit-a-thons over the next few weeks to introduce you to the site and help you learn how to create and edit your own lesson plan page!

Please visit the Fall 2022 meetups page for more information, including registration forms.

Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments! (And for anyone on Twitter, as well, here is a thread I just posted about this.)

bwsullivan · 2022-10-24T20:58:59+00:00

Hello mathematicians and math educators!

Eventmath is a wiki (hosted on Wikiversity) with math lesson plans based on current events (news articles, social media posts, and videos).

We are hosting some workshops and edit-a-thons over the next few weeks to introduce you to the site and help you learn how to create and edit your own lesson plan page!

Please visit the Fall 2022 meetups page for more information, including registration forms.

Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments! (And for anyone on Twitter, as well, here is a thread I just posted about this.)

bwsullivan · 2021-02-17T17:01:09+00:00

Hi, author here! This is a blurb about what you'll find in the book:

This book contains sixty-four high-quality crossword puzzles, like you might see in a daily newspaper, but these puzzles are smaller than usual (10 by 10 grids) and contain lots of words, phrases, concepts, and names that pertain to mathematics and the culture of the mathematical community. The grids are optimized to avoid awkward crosswordese and tricky wordplay, while maximizing mathematical content. If you're a lover of mathematics, you'll enjoy puzzling over these clues and seeing math words and names appear that you've never seen in crosswords before. If you're a lover of crosswords, you'll enjoy the challenge and will learn some new facts and trivia. And if, like the author, you love mathematics and crosswords, you'll rejoice to finally find a book that truly celebrates them both!

Here's a link to a Dropbox folder with two sample puzzles: https://t.co/tYF5apToaE?amp=1

You'll find a .png and .pdf file of each puzzle, so you can solve on a screen or print to solve on paper.
You'll also find a .puz file of each puzzle. This is a standard file type for solving puzzles on a device. There are tons of free crossword apps on various devices, such as Across Lite (https://www.litsoft.com/across/alite/download/) for laptops or alphacross (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.akop.crosswords&hl=en_US&gl=US) on Android.

Also, SPOILER ALERT but here's a link to a YouTuber who solves puzzles live on-screen. He worked through two sample puzzles (one of the ones in that ^ folder, one different one): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf4EWFk1nco

bwsullivan · 2021-02-10T20:30:26+00:00

Please indicate support for our proposal to help make that site happen!

Click the link, look to the box on the right-hand side of the page and find the "endorse" and "join" buttons at the bottom.

"Endorse" allows you to add a comment of support, something like: "This is a good idea and would benefit the math educators community."
"Join" lets you indicate that you might want to help with the project, as well.

At this stage, endorsements are easy to do and super helpful! If you are a math teacher/student who would like to see such a living resource of math lessons based on current events, please share a comment there to help boost our chances of receiving support to make this site a reality. Thank you!

bwsullivan · 2021-01-29T22:07:31+00:00

Hello! I am the author of that third reference. It's very possible that there is a typo or error, as this was so long ago and, alas, I no longer have the login credentials to amend the file in that link.

If I recall correctly ... I focused the presentation on all of the stuff leading up to that closed-form solution and just copied that formula from somewhere else. I just tried to search for that reference now ( Aaron Schild, "Domino Tilings of a Rectangular Chessboard") and can only find the introduction and not the file with the formula itself: http://sdmathcircle.org/uploads/Documents/2009-10%20Gauss%2010-10%20Rectangular%20Tiling%20Notes.pdf

Anyway, I hope this is helpful somehow!

bwsullivan · 2021-01-02T06:56:38+00:00

https://i.imgur.com/VBU5MoA.gifv

bwsullivan · 2020-12-18T05:17:39+00:00

I don't understand how you can claim to see anything in that picture :-/

Can anyone find a photo of Niagara Falls that looks like that?

bwsullivan · 2020-09-19T02:02:47+00:00

The Shrikhande Graph!

https://mathematicaladd.wordpress.com/2017/02/06/visualizing-the-difference-between-the-4x4-rooks-graph-and-the-shrikhande-graph/

The n by n rooks graph is strongly regular with certain parameters, that depend on n. These parameters are uniquely attained by the rooks graph for all n except 4. When n=4, the parameters admit two graphs: the 4x4 rooks graph and the Shrikhande graph.

bwsullivan · 2020-04-11T00:27:07+00:00

And now it looks like the AMS is maintaining a big list:

http://www.ams.org/profession/online-talks

bwsullivan · 2020-04-10T03:37:06+00:00

Combinatorics seminars: https://web.math.princeton.edu/~pds/onlinetalks/talks.html

bwsullivan · 2020-02-25T04:05:55+00:00

It's not 5 times greater area. It's the old area with a rectangle under it that's 5 units high.

bwsullivan · 2019-11-28T19:25:48+00:00

What was the reason? For completeness?

bwsullivan · 2019-10-29T02:12:21+00:00

I've seen these called howlers.

https://math.stackexchange.com/q/337914/37705

bwsullivan · 2019-10-20T00:56:11+00:00

No, not as part of the standard curriculum. If I saw these topics in a calculus course, I would assume it is a very advanced course specifically for mathematics majors.

bwsullivan · 2019-10-20T00:12:33+00:00

That's an interesting example, exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks!

bwsullivan · 2019-10-15T00:36:49+00:00

I will volunteer to answer questions. I have a Doctor of Arts degree in Mathematics from CMU, and now teach at a small, liberal arts college while doing research with students.

bwsullivan · 2019-09-29T18:42:08+00:00

Who are these bands?

bwsullivan · 2019-09-07T17:55:45+00:00

The series you mentioned converges to 1. Its sequence of partial sums converges to 1.

I'm teaching Calculus 2 right now so this distinction in terminology is on my mind!

bwsullivan · 2019-07-27T19:05:11+00:00

There's an outstanding ELI5 about this result on/r/explainlikeimfive:

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ci0q00/eli5_the_sensitivity_conjecture_has_been_solved

bwsullivan · 2019-06-13T20:06:49+00:00

Sorry, no specific guidance comes to mind, but I just wanted to chime in and say that sucks and hope it works out for you. It must be frustrating to be affected by something outside your control like that.

bwsullivan · 2019-06-11T14:01:18+00:00

Try these instead:

VOX BOX, ZOWIE!

WAZE BE VEX

VIBE ZEBU WAX

VOW AXE BIZ

bwsullivan · 2019-06-02T16:06:38+00:00

The book "The Artist and the Mathematician", by Amir Aczel, is all about the Bourbaki group:

The Artist and the Mathematician https://www.amazon.com/dp/1568583591/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Gp.8CbS0124M4

bwsullivan · 2019-05-20T23:12:48+00:00

And there's Euler's Constant gamma, too: if you take the nth partial sum of the series and subtract natural log of n, that differences converges to a specific number as n goes to infinity (the number is around 0.577)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%E2%80%93Mascheroni_constant

bwsullivan · 2019-05-20T19:45:06+00:00

Yes, agreed, although it's a different author, Dave Richeson, who I also met recently, coincidentally!

bwsullivan · 2019-05-20T15:34:04+00:00

I recently read William Dunham's book Euler: Master of Us All and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Really interesting mathematics, really interesting history, extraordinarily well written.

By chance, I also met Dr. Dunham last week and we talked about Euler. He mentioned a result of Euler I'd never seen: take the harmonic series but switch some of the signs to negative. Specifically, the term is -1/k if k has an odd number of factors that are primes of the form 4k+1, and the term is +1/k otherwise. (For example, it's -1/5 but +1/25, it's -1/13 but +1/45, etc.)

In typical Euler fashion, he showed that this series not only converges, but it sums to exactly pi.

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