All Questions

I'm teaching a physics class that has a year of calculus as a prerequisite, but as so often happens, many of my students have forgotten a lot of the much more basic math from earlier classes. In ...

I am going to teach this probability and statistics course in a couple of weeks. The probability part can be made very interesting, in my opinion, easily. But I am a little worried that I might make ...

Let us assume that I want to graph any of the functions below. A) A can of soda costs $\$1$. Draw a graph depicting the total cost as a function of the number of cans you buy. Comment: One cannot ...

Background The students in my country are supposed to be able to work with and answer questions about functions at the age of around 15. This is asserted in the standard mathematics curriculum for ...

What would be the advantages and disadvantages of having alternative bases like binary, quaternary, octal, hexadecimal, and/or vigesimal taught primarily in the language department? Perhaps using a ...

In linear programming we sometimes use artificial variables for the simplex method. After a certain number of iterations of the simplex method we reach a point in which all coefficients are non ...

Case: Exam Problem given to student at university: Give a problem/context illustrating the operation $\frac{4}{5} + \frac{2}{3}$ Answer by student: Anna and Beatrice buy flowers for grandpa for his ...

Wikipedia shows that in 1886 John Milton Gregory outlined his "The Seven Laws of Teaching"; asserting that a teacher should: Know thoroughly and familiarly the lesson you wish to teach; ...

Background Hello, I am an undergraduate in CS. I would like to study Graph Theory on my own (self-study) for a competitive examination (named GATE). It is an examination for undergraduates and as such,...

What research has been done on the effects of requiring students to learn to count and do some easy arithmetic in an alternative number base, for example binary, base four, base six, base eight, base ...

A person recalls that he or she: From age six to twelve never saw a slide rule, a table of logarithms, a table trigonometric values, nor an electronic calculator. Did not learn to multiply fractions, ...

A math student may write very long and detailed answers, just because he or she does not know what to look for, for example in Geometry proofs. Or - a student may just write an arbitrary step without ...

Is it okay if I spend about 30 mins to 1 hours trying to solve a single math's questions? The Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) is an engineering entrance assessment conducted for admission to Top ...

I've two questions that I'd like to ask: I teach IB Math AA HL on a regular basis, but plan to take on some A level further math in near future. I'd like to know how much harder or more detailed A ...

[cross posted from mse] the class of all finite groups is not closed under produtcs - example: the product over all finite cyclic groups - thus it is not a variety of algebras, ie, it's not ...

I am teaching 12-16 year olds. How should I write down the Pythagorean theorem equation? Some alternatives: $a^2 + b^2 = c^2$ $\text{leg}^2 + \text{leg}^2 = \text{hypotenuse}^2$ $\text{leg}_1^2 + \...

Say I have the problem: I roll a die three times and I am interested in the probability of ending up with two 1's. My impression is that a single roll is called a trial. What is the full 3-roll action ...

I want to start by sharing my teaching philosophy: I believe in teaching in a way that is primarily student-centered. That is, I prefer to do less talking to give the student(s) more time to practice ...

Like the title says. I am self studying intro to proofs(How to prove it by velleman) so I can start an introduction to analysis. I am wondering if I should complete all the exercises in the textbook(...

I want to stress to my students that we should be careful with how we treat the equals sign and that we should always make sure that the units match. However, sometimes I write $ 11:40 - 15 \text{ min}...

Learning mathematics and learning parkour seem to have a lot in common. Both can be done on varying levels, but to progress in either one needs to overlearn and build basic skills so that these skills ...

Evidence suggests that even instructional approaches that produce conceptual gains may leave students reliant and expecting to be reliant on guidance from instructors (Redish et al., 1998). Students ...

TL;DR version: It seems to me that high school curricula no longer distinguish between "horizontal shift" and "phase shift", or between "frequency" and "angular ...

I was reading this book: "Dynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies: A Self-Learning Approach" by Mohammed F. Daqaq In the preface, the author explains of his "flipped classroom ...

I just looked at matriculation exams from Finland. They have both basic and advanced level exams. Most US high school seniors could not pass the basic exam. If each US state were to create its own ...

I have been looking at questions on Math Stack Exchange and I am frequently coming across topics that sound as if they could have been optional chapters in a high school geometry class, but I have ...

Tom Lehrer claims and the audience seems to agree with him that the 'old way', before new math to do subtraction was to say, for example, 'three from two is nine carry the one'. I never heard of this ...

I am thinking of taking up a position at a liberal art college. I have taught mathematics at large public universities but I have no idea what is it like to work at a liberal art colleges. So what are ...

Why are higher level math textbooks almost completely black and white? I can't think of any math textbooks on a subject more advanced than calculus that uses colors. Edited to add that the comments by ...

Many definitions in mathematics are "fully crystalized". Sometimes the form of these definitions might be somewhat baffling to the uninitiated. For example, the definition of a relation ...

Some students are prone to making small calculation errors. Not errors in understanding, but errors like adding or multiplying integers incorrectly, or dropping a negative sign. Unsystematic errors in ...

In an Advanced Calculus course, students were asked to prove $$|a_1 +a_2+...+a_n| \le |a_1|+|a_2|+... +|a_n|$$ for $n$ real numbers $a_1,a_2,...a_n$ I am teaching assistant for this course, and one of ...

Mathematics Educators. I'm having a difficult time understanding modular arithmetic (particularly its applications for proof writing). I understand very well the basics. I know that $a\equiv b \pmod n$...

When memorizing and recalling the times table, I learned to say "six sevens are forty-two", and always wondered what it would be like to learn to say "six times seven equals forty-two&...

Which academic subjects examine what the advantages and disadvantages of the various number bases are, e.g. besides base ten: base twelve, base sixteen, base eight, base two and the ways that they can ...

I love mathematics and I know pretty much everyone in this community does too! That feeling of being stuck on a mathematical problem for days as you try to unearth the complexity in front of you is ...

Typically universities ask students to evaluate each course at the end of semester. "On the scale of 1 to 5 how well did X do Y"-type questions. I rather do a continuous survey, from the ...

Previously I had asked a question about something similar, but more constrained. But now I ask something more general. I just got hold of the Linear Algebra by Prof Gilbert of MIT and they are just ...

I'm teaching Calculus I. It's time for the derivative of $x^x$. In previous semesters, I've told students we mainly do this just for closure, so that we know that we can find derivatives of every ...

A standard pre-calculus curriculum consists of the study of elementary functions: Polynomials, rational functions, (circular and hyperbolic) trigonometric functions, exponential functions, their ...

This semester in first-semester Calculus I've been trying to focus on how to do Calculus calculations when given a table of data since this seems to be of importance to science majors. There are ...

Circumstance Hello, I am looking for books that encourage creative problem-solving at the high school level. I attended secondary school in the United States and I have noticed that there are ...

I will be teaching discrete mathematics. I’m wondering if anyone can tell me a couple topics that were classically in this class (in any undergraduate version) that were probably discarded over time, ...

I will be teaching a combination of business calculus and business linear algebra, two classes that have been around awhile at my school. I’m assuming people are familiar with these types of classes. ...

Context: I am an assistant professor of mathematics at a small school in the US. Many of my courses have homework assignments administered by WeBWorK. A small minority of students struggle mightily (...

Are there some natural contexts in which a double exponential occurs, $x$ to the ($y$ to the $z$): $$ x ^ {(y ^ z)} \;, \textrm{or} \;, a ^ {(b ^ c)} \; \textrm{?} $$ Of course one can contrive many ...

I had some mathematics education during my high school and Electrical Engineering studies, but I never used any of them during my career as a software professional. Now I am again coming across Linear ...

In the optimization section of Calculus 1 a common problem is to find the minimum distance between a curve and a point. I'd like to extend this idea and be able to compute the minimum distance between ...

On Mathematics StackExchange for a particular instance, it is highly recommended that questioners mark up their questions using $\LaTeX$. A surprising number of mathematicians and student ...

I am not sure which StackExchange to ask this question but I am interested in the relative underperformance of Western countries such as Australia, US, UK compared to other higher performing countries ...