This is “Kock Snowflake Fractal”, a lovely woven rug from Donna Loraine Contractor, on display at the 2012 Bridges Math and Art Conference at Towson University.
Read more about the artist here.
Art Photography
Math Photo: Sculpture of Spheres
This is a photo of the Sonja Henie Ice Fountain, which stands outside the historic hockey arena in Lake Placid, New York. I suppose most people like it best when it’s covered in ice, but the mathematician in me thinks it looks just fine like this.
Art Photography
Math Art: Kolam Spirals
This is “Kolam – Brown: Four Spirals”, by Shanthi Chandrasekar, on display at the 2012 Bridges Math and Art Conference at Towson University.
Read more about the artist here.
Challenge NYT
Math Quiz: NYT Learning Network
Through Math for America, I am part of an on-going collaboration with the New York Times Learning Network. My latest contribution, a Test Yourself quiz-question, can be found here:
https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/15/test-yourself-aug-15-2012/
This question relates to mutual funds and investment growth: how much would $1,000 be worth after 35 years?
Teaching
What Skills Should Children Learn?
I know very little about early childhood education, but have recently started to think more about it. I greatly enjoy interacting intellectually with my nieces and nephews and find it fascinating to explore ideas like fractals, infinity, and ordering with them. But I don’t really know anything about the theory of how children learn, what they should learn, or when they should learn, mathematically, or otherwise.
To begin exploring the idea, I thought about possible fundamental questions and eventually settled on this: What are some important content-independent skills that children need to learn?
I posted the question on Google+, and Don Pata, MrBombastic, Jim Wilder, and Christopher Danielson all offered some great ideas. Here’s the list we compiled through discussion, in no particular order.
Problem-Solving Perseverance — the ability to sustain focus and work through a problem to the end
Intellectual Discipline — the willingness to focus and invest energy on learning and development
Number Sense — an intuitive understanding of quantity: magnitudes, relationships, and scales
Reflection — the ability to objectively self-assess, refine, and adapt
Communication — the ability to express information and emotion in a variety of ways, and appropriately interpret and process the expressions of others
Courage — the willingness to fail
Curiosity — the habit of inquisitiveness and the ability to ask good questions
A good list to start with! Thanks for all the help, and if there are other suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments.
You can see the original thread on Google+ here.