# All Questions

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### Low-tech ways of visualizing multivariable and vector calculus

One way, which is the most obvious, is do sketches of 3d shapes that tend to be the ones that we can all draw (like rectangle, cone, cylinder, sphere, etc.) Another way is by analogy so even if we can'...
276 views

### What to do when uncertain about a question while tutoring

I tutor various math subjects online for a large tutoring company. I know that as a math tutor, it's my responsibility to be able to explain any concept in a way that makes sense to the student, or to ...
53 views

### Transition into a non-explicit sample space world

This is one of the problem taunting me over years while explaining probability. In most of the high-school as well as graduate textbooks, there are at most very few lines to deal with this problem. ...
61 views

### Trying to explain(understand?) combinations

Let us assume that we have 30 balls( 7 green, 10 black, 13 white). I was trying to explain to someone how we count the number of possibilities of getting 3 greens, 3 black, and 3 white balls in a ...
55 views

### Intuition explanation about Lebesgue measure zero of the rational numbers

This is a question about the intuition of the rational number having measure zero. Let us consider followng proof: Let $I = [0,1]$ and $Q = \mathbb Q \cap I$ and let $\lambda$ be the Lebesgue measure. ...
116 views

### Can I motivate kids to do math by giving them candies?

I am talking about literally asking for kids' time/attention by offering them candies: not giving them tasks about summing real candies, etc. I try to teach math from time to time to my relatives of ...
156 views

99 views

### What should the time limit for this high school math competition topology round be?

When I participated in the 2019 John Hopkins Math Tournament, the team round consisted of two separate topics, 40 minutes per round, and 3 people per team. My team suffered on the topology round. Only ...
300 views

### When does thinking $(-8)^{1/3} = -2$ result in problems for an undergraduates?

In high school we learn that the cube root of $-8$ is $-2$. Much later some of us learn about the single valued natural logarithm of a complex number, and that $w^z = e^{z\cdot Lz(w)}$ when $w$ and $z$...
71 views

### Recommendation for Discrete Mathematics

I'm taking a Mathematical Structures course as a 2nd year math major. Our course textbook is Discrete mathematics and Its Applications, by Rosen. It's been very difficult finding good content on ...
85 views

### References for visualizing numbers in base 10 flats

Base 10 blocks (units, rods, flats and cubes) are a widespread manipulative material for teaching place value. However, piling rods on top of each other is not very stable, so it is not easy to build ...
66 views

### Math websites/apps for high school students

I am undergraduate math student who is interested in being a high school math teacher. I have been given an assignment to present to my class (for a total of about 20 minutes) a teaching tool or a ...
119 views

### Analogy for cylindrical shells

The analogy for cross-sections is easy since we can think of how slices of bread can make up a loaf. But what would be the analogy for cylindrical shells? Regarding shapes, apparently there's ...
3k views

### What's the point of learning equivalence relations?

I teach an introductory discrete mathematics course at a community college to math and computing majors, usually in their sophomore year. As is common, it's partly used as the first foray into formal ...
240 views

### Where does the compulsive use of three dots come from and should it be discouraged?

There are some students in freshman calculus/even precalculus who compulsively use the three dots $\therefore$ in every single step: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therefore_sign It's not "wrong&...
125 views

### Why are “homogeneous differential equations” in the standard ODE curriculum?

Here I mean a differential equation of the form $y'=f(x,y)$ where for some $\alpha$, we have $f(tx,ty)=t^\alpha f(x,y)$ for every $t$. I have no idea why this topic seems to appear in every ODE ...
3k views

### Math activities for fast-finishers

I am a math teacher for sixth graders and I am trying to think of some strategies to keep the students who finish their work quickly productively occupied. I would like to have a selection of ...
81 views

### The purpose of a particular rational function integration exercise

This might be a more appropriate question for math.stackexchange, but it's about a problem I'm considering giving my students, so here it goes. One of the later exercises in Section 7.4 of James ...
137 views

### Is there an arithmetic book similar to “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons” by Siegfried Engelmann?

I have found Engelmann’s book (mentioned in subject) to be extremely effective. Is there an equivalent to this book for teaching Arithmetic? I believe the overall approach or method is called Direct ...
285 views

### How can I explain construction of the Bézout's identity to my kid?

My kid is soon 7 years old, he could understand fractions, linear equation and modulo operation. I've just taught him Chinese remainder theorem, looking to introduce some more basic number theory ...
176 views

### How much literature research should one do when designing a course?

For each mathematical subject on the undergraduate level there are many textbooks, often with quite different approaches to the subject. Some are just concise and rigorous, some focus on examples, ...
79 views

### Create a mathematical problem with randomized parameters

Recently I am using Moodle to create problems with randomized parameters. In Moodle, there is so-called Calculated questions that let me do this in a straightforward way. For example, I can simply ...
171 views

### Question formats for online tests, to deter cheating

I'm teaching calculus 1 online this term and anticipate being plagued by the perennial problem of cheaters. I have seen suggestions for how to arrange the testing time to accommodate for traditional ...
91 views

### Are books as old as J.E. Thompson's “for the practical man” series outdated?

I'm sure Thompson's books were a fine series back in his time, but are they still worth recommending for, say, interested high-school students or prospective college students that want to brush up ...
4k views

### Future educators writing nonsense questions

I teach future elementary educators mathematics content courses. We play a lot in class with tasks like "Write a variety of word problems which would require the student to multiply 2.3 by 1.4&...
218 views

### How should mathematics tests be designed? [closed]

I am speaking about high school mathematics . Students have attended a mathematics course . By the end thereof , students are supposed to be able to: find the limit of a real function f as “x” ...
124 views

### How to make maths explainer videos?

I am a maths teacher and I want to make maths explainer videos particularly like this guy is doing. In fact, in my research, I came to know that manim is the latest tool for creating maths animations ...
359 views

### How to explain to undergraduate students what research means?

Background: I am a lecturer in computer science, but my research is mostly theoretic and mathematic, so I ask here. I want to encourage my undergraduate students to become research students after ...
106 views

### Grading in a way that lets students have a good and formative experience

This fall, I'll be a reader (i.e. homework grader) for the first time, and the course is a second-level linear algebra course, which is likely the first proof-based course most of the students will ...
2k views

### Are there direct practical applications of differentiating natural logarithms?

The textbook I am using to teach Calculus I includes in the exercises of most chapters a number of interesting real-world applications of the concepts from that chapter. However, the chapter on the ...
468 views

### How to word this exercise about converting “English” into interval notation?

I am writing an exercise for a precalculus homework assignment that deals with the topic of interval notation. The point of the exercise is to convert open, closed, and half open intervals described ...
94 views

### What is a good way to teach Taylor expansion of multi-variable calculus?

I found teaching Taylor expansion for multivariable functions rather challenging. It is a bit complicated to prove and to to compute. So what happened to me last year was that my students simply ...
2k views

### How do you explain concavity of a polynomial without any calculus?

How do you explain the concavity of a polynomial without any calculus? As the title suggests, I am struggling to explain when given a graph of a polynomial, how we determine when it is concave up or ...
494 views

### How to layout a solution to a trig equation?

I am interested in how you would encourage students to layout their working to a trigonometric equation. For instance, let's consider this problem: Solve the equation $6\cos x - 8\sin x = 7$ for \$0 &...
76 views

### asynchronous teaching and requiring frequent email updates from students, and having these as the only part of their grade

Due to the COVID pandemic, classes at my school (small public liberal arts college) will be all online. I've chosen to try teaching asynchronously (via pre-made video lectures) starting next week. I ...
130 views

### Is there a study on how often modern teaching methods versus traditional methods are used in a math classes?

Most of the students I've encountered seem to have had the same sort of math education I've had, the standard lecture, book readings, homework problems and exams. In my own experience and in my ...
64 views

### What are some of the struggles that come with teaching introductory formal logic?

I'm currently an undergraduate student who wants to do research on the pedagogy of formal logic. As a result, I wanted to know what are some challenges that instructors (or even students for that ...
949 views

### Best form for slide / beamer presentation: display items in a slide as they are discussed or all at once?

I am preparing beamer slides for an online class, and I am unsure whether I should display different items in a single slide as they are discussed or all at once. To be more precise: I am teaching ...
130 views

### Learning strategies for high volume/pace learning?

Background: I am a graduate student in a mid-tier U.S. university, and I am struggling. I feel like I during my undergrad, I haven't aquired the neccesary skills to keep up with the high volume/pace ...