Today we celebrate the third Permutation Day of the year! I call days like today permutation days because the digits of the day and the month can be rearranged to form the year.
Celebrate Permutation Day by mixing things up! Try doing things in a different order today. Just remember, for some operations, order definitely matters!
The Rosenthal Prize for Innovation in Math Teaching, presented by the Museum of Mathematics, aims to celebrate and promote the development of creative, engaging, and replicable math lessons. The winning teacher receives $25,000, and their lesson is shared freely by the Museum of Mathematics.
Applications for the 2015 Rosenthal Prize are now open. As a past awardee, I will be participating in an application workshop at the museum on Friday, May 1st. The purpose of the workshop is to help teachers with the application process by answering questions and providing feedback.
The workshop details, including registration information, are available here. For those unable to attend in person, the workshop will also be live-streamed.
I encourage interested teachers to consider applying for the Rosenthal Prize. It’s a unique and interesting challenge, and just participating in the process can be a growth experience.
I’ve been enjoying getting familiar with our new 3D printer. I’m not sure these parametric surfaces were the best pieces to start out with, but I have learned a lot!
From left to right, we have a figure eight torus, a Fresnel surface, and a cyclide. Not pictured: the many, many failures.
This menacing creature is Glyptotherium texanum. Well, was Glypotherium texanum.
The armor caught my attention. It’s made of small plates that create an interesting tiling of a curved surface.
Notice how the tiles slowly change from quadrilaterals to pentagons to hexagons, and back again! I wonder what factors determine the shape of each tile as they grow.
