Category: Uncategorized
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Tools that Help There are tools that enhance one’s ability to understand. And there are tools that are a hindrance to understanding. For example, when I first came across a Phillips head screw and the screwdriver that accompanied it, I was blown away. I was intuitively able to see why this screw head was superior…
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The Siege of Yodfat In AD 67, in the middle of the first Jewish-Roman War, a rag tag band of forty Jewish revolutionaries managed to get themselves besieged in Yodfat. Realizing they were going to be captured and perhaps tortured, the group decided that they would commit mass suicide. However, given the Jewish aversion to…
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Confession Playing with numbers is one of my favorite ways to pass time. Of course, we can get to numbers per se in a variety of ways. One can be from simply doodling on a page. I remember drawing grids of dots on a page and playing all kinds of games with my classmates when…
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Inhale Ok. It’s time for a little breather. On 17 March 2024 we began a series of posts on e. Then we moved to another series on principles of counting. Then last week we completed a series on π. All these were quite heavy and I’m sure some of you are still reeling from the…
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Recapitulation We are in the middle of a series of posts on π. Our journey began with A Piece of the Pi which was followed by Off On a Tangent. Last week, I posted The Rewards of Repetition in which I promised that we would break down the Gauss-Legendre algorithm into the distinct parts. Of course, as mentioned…
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The past week got quite busy all of a sudden and the week ahead also looks like it will be the same. I know I’m in the middle of a series of post on π. I will continue with the series in a couple of weeks. For now, I leave you with some collections of…
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The Growing Frustration It’s frustrating. Yes, you heard me right. It’s frustrating. You may be wondering why I am saying this and in what context. So here goes. Just the other day, I was looking up some perspectives on a mathematics discussion forum. Quite naturally, there were many mathematics teachers in the forum. And quite…
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Setting the Stage I have long been fascinated by patterns that exist in numerical sequences. Early exploration led me to the discovery of the Fibonacci series and the associated Golden Ratio. I also came across Pascal’s Triangle, which remains a source of intrigue. Hence, when I was introduced to the tests for divisibility, I devoured…
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In the last three posts, we have been dealing with some issues related to counting. In Learning to Count, I introduced us to the area of combinatorics and specifically combinatorial arguments. In the second post, Abjuring Double Counting, we looked at the inclusion-exclusion principle that is used to ensure that every element is counted exactly…
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Background I have been teaching high school students for a while now. While I have taught physics and theory of knowledge, my main focus has been mathematics. One of the more fascinating areas of the high school mathematics syllabus is probability and statistics. Now don’t get me wrong. I know that, in an earlier post,…
Acutely Obtuse 