math education
carlyo | January 21, 2014Sonya Kovalevsky – Russian-born Mathematician
One of the world's best mathematicians of her era; established first major result in general theory of partial differential equations; first modern European woman appointed to full professorship; advocate of women's rights
Sonya Kovalevsky (also known as Sofia Kowalevski) was born in Russia in 1850 and became a noted mathematician in spite of a father who "had a horror of learned women," according to historical accounts. As a young woman, she could study math and physics only in secret. She married a man she did not love just to get away from her…
sciencewoman | October 29, 2009There's a few days left in our October DonorsChoose challenge, and even after that there are many more great projects out there waiting for our help.
A few weeks ago, wonderful educator-science-historian-cultural-studies-expert-mother-blogger Leslie Madden-Brooks responded to a plea to help fund some projects, and I was deeply moved by what she wrote to the classroom, so I wanted to share it with you...
I gave to this project because I had such a tough time learning math, and I wish I had been able to develop this kind of mathematical and critical thinking through reading interesting authors…
goodmath | July 25, 2008 I've been getting peppered with requests to comment on a recent argument that's
been going on about math education, particularly with respect to multiplication.
We've got a fairly prominent guy named Keith Devlin ranting that
"multiplication is not repeated addition". I've been getting mail from both
sides of this - from people who basically say "This guy's an idiot - ofcourse it's repeated addition", and from people who say "Look how stupid
these people are that they don't understand that multiplication isn't repeated
addition".
In general, I'm mostly inclined to agree with him, with some…