Questions tagged [examples]
For questions about examples for some mathematical subject – usually for purposes of motivation and illustration.
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Good, simple examples of induction?
Many examples of induction are silly, in that there are more natural methods available. Could you please post examples of induction, where it is required, and which are simple enough as examples in a ...
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Examples of Innumeracy
I read Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos and would like to share more up-to-date and relevant examples of innumeracy to motivate my grade 8, 9 & 10 students. Are there any websites, blogs, books, ...
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Optimization problems that today's students might actually encounter?
Our students are not fencing in farm fields, cutting wires and folding them, or designing windows, so they are often uninspired by the optimization problems we give them. They seem like something that ...
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Where do you find math tasks?
What the title says. I got my degree in math last year and now I'm working on a master's independent study project through my education department finding math tasks for K-12 curriculum aligned with ...
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What female mathematician can I introduce to my High School students?
I enjoy talking about Pythagoras when I teach the Pythagorean theorem. I sometimes mention Descartes when introducing Cartesian coordinates. And Leibniz and Newton are mentioned in many calculus ...
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
My six year old started school a few months back and he's loving it. This first year is more about social skills than anything academic and I like that approach. But we're spending some time at home ...
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Where can I find realistic data for college-level elementary statistics problems?
I'm creating a large number of practice problems for my statistics students. These problems are for an elementary stats course where students:
measure central tendency
measure dispersion
use linear ...
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Ideas for high school pure maths projects
I am thinking of giving my high school students some pure maths projects to do. It is a lot easier to think of some interesting stats projects but not in pure maths. The students' maths background are ...
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What is a good motivation/showcase for a student for the study of eigenvalues?
Courses about linear algebra make great demands on looking for eigenvalues and transforming matrices to diagonal matrices (or, at least, to Jordan normal form). This is somehow a technical, recipe-...
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What are some good low-prerequisite examples for the heuristic advice "If you cannot prove it, prove something stronger."?
One useful trick in mathematics is to prove something stronger instead of the question asked.
This works well in induction proofs (because strengthening the claim also strengthens the induction basis)...
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Counterintuitive consequences of standard definitions
Let me motivate my question with the following situation. While teaching the concept of continuity, I usually start with motivating the concept. Then, when we see that there is an important and ...
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Good examples of proof by contradiction?
In later courses on automata theory, many students just seem incapable of getting a proof that a language isn't regular right, be it using the pumping lemma (see also the many questions on the matter ...
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What are some good ways to motivate and introduce reasoning abstractly about abstract algebra?
I've found one of the hardest topics to introduce to students early on is abstract algebra. Even if they've already written proofs, it's hard for them to work directly from axioms. They seem to have ...
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Examples of Mathematical Slang
Unless you have taught highschool algebra in Iran, you could not make sense of the phrase: Elephant and Teacup Identity! This is what teachers use to refer to the following identities:
$ (a+b)(a^2-...
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What are some fun/nonstandard examples of arithmetic/geometric series?
I am teaching those topics (arithmetic/geometric series) just now, and want some
not so standard (fun) examples, which can be used essentially at high school/beginning calculus level. I'm ...
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Unusual applications of integration
I am trying to teach my calculus students to apply integration by thinking about what they are integrating rather than just applying formulas. Calculus books are full of formulas like "to find the ...
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Simple "real world" l'Hôpital's rule problem?
I am on a team which is writing a set of lecture notes for differential calculus.
I am using a format of "Break ground" which poses a problem, "Dig in" which develops the tools to solve the ...
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How to convey the meaning of "mathematical maturity"?
Some university-level courses have no specific prerequisites, yet are mathematically involved to the extent that someone with little to no experience in math will probably find themselves in over ...
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Examples of arithmetic and geometric sequences and series in daily life
In this part of the course I am just trying to show that we actually see alot of sequences and series everyday in our daily life.
I already found some examples such as the housenumbers when you drive ...
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How can teachers warn students about common mistakes without causing the student to make the mistake?
For example, if you're teaching integration of $\int \frac{dx}{1+x^2}$, would you mention the common wrong answer of $\ln\left(1+x^2\right)+C$?
--
For myself, I very rarely mention common mistakes ...
user13544
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A Series of Unfortunate Examples!
All of us know, when teaching, the "right" choice of examples is important. Though, making the "right" choice is one of those things that are easier said than done. Here is the ...
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What are some good examples to motivate the implicit function theorem?
I always had problems teaching the implicit function theorem in advanced analysis courses. This result is motivated by later applications, but it would be great to provide easily accessible examples ...
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Real-World Applications of Logic
When introducing logic in a first semester university course, the examples I use are often quite artificial. One example: One of three kids (Annie, Bob, Chris) has broken a window. Annies says "it was ...
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Good motivation for the introduction of Lebesgue integral?
When students take a course on real analysis, they have likely learned about Riemann integrals.
What is a good motivation why they have to learn a new way to integrate?
A student don't want to hear ...
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Simple, elegant ways to teach the idea of what functions are for the first time
The context
In my country, when the concept of function needs to be introduced in math classes, most teachers will simply talk about $f(x)=c$, $f(x)=ax+b$ and $f(x)=1/x$ (constant, linear and inverse ...
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Is there a simple real-world problem I can use to motivate a formula for $\displaystyle \sum_{i=1}^n i $?
I would like to know if there is a simple real-world problem which requires knowing a closed form for $\displaystyle \sum_{i=1}^n i$ and/or the sum of the first $n$ even/odd numbers. The only ...
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Example for a theorem where the (more) formal proof is easier than other argumentation (e.g. imagination)
When students ask me for the use of the formal and abstract theory, I often would like to give answers they wouldn't understand. For instance, one application of abstract vector spaces and the banach ...
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Breaking students from the habit of relying on examples
One of the most frustrating things about my experiences teaching math (at the university level, if that matters) is that students seem very reluctant to actually learn the material. Instead, they seem ...
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What are easy examples from daily life of constrained optimization?
A standard example of motivating constrained optimization are examples where the setup is described in a lot of lines, e.g., when you own a company and the company is making some products out of ...
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Open-ended tasks for teaching students about integration techniques
One of the best algebra-teaching games I've seen is the "Four 4's" game, where students have to take 4 fours and construct every number from 1-100 using only those fours and algebraic operations:
44/...
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Examples of application problems of coordinate geometry in the complex plane?
I am currently writing some basic introductory texts to
complex numbers for third-year high school students (Denmark). My main goal is to introduce complex numbers as a practical tool that both ...
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Examples for reasoning by analogy going wrong
Assume you don't know the result of $(-1)\cdot 3$. You might try calculating
$$
\begin{align*}
3\cdot 3=9\\ 2\cdot 3=6\\1\cdot 3=3\\0\cdot 3 = 0
\end{align*}
$$
thus you may argue $$(-1)\cdot 3=-3$$ ...
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Monte Carlo real life examples
I want to introduce Monte Carlo methods for a group of 16-18-years-old high school students.
Besides classic examples (coin flips and count of heads/tails, rolls of a pair of dice) which other ...
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A blog or newsfeed for innumeracy in the media?
There are a lot of good particular examples of innumeracy at this question. But in addition what I would like is to be able to consistently bring current examples in to class. Does anyone maintain a ...
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Rigorous proofs vs. illustrative examples
No one would argue against the idea/ observation that proofs are very important in mathematics. Some people are trying to make their notations on a blackboard during a lecture as consistent as ...
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Second Order Differential Equation Example Request
I am looking for some non-complicated second order differential equations to illustrate certain techniques for control engineering. It doesn’t matter if the differential equations are linear or non-...
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How to teach mathematically about Fourier analysis and synthesis? [duplicate]
I have recently started teaching. It gets totally blank in front of the big crowd. Now, I am quite confused about how to start teaching the Fourier transform and Fourier series chapter.
I want ...
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Do you avoid examples or test questions that showcase an algorithmic plug'n'chug approach?
If we accept that there's not much learning from doing the "same" questions, like find the derivative of $x^2$, and $x^3$, and $x^4$ due to the algorithmic way of how it's done, then what ...
user13544
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Designing a Good Question on Kinematics: Test and Develop
So I was asked in an interview to design two questions for UK Physics A Level students studying the suvat equations, that is, equations of motion with a constant acceleration.
The first needs to '...
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