Mr Honner

2011 Sloan Award Winners

I would like to extend my congratulations to the recipients of the 2011Sloan Awards for Excellence in Teaching Science and Mathematics.

These awards, presented by the Fund for the City of New York, recognize outstanding teachers in the New York City Public School System. I am very proud to have received this award in 2010.

As a teacher, the current public discourse that focuses mainly on what is “broken” in public education can be deflating. It is wonderful to be a part of something that honors the great work teachers do every day.

Here’s a short write-up in the New York Times about the winners, and bios and videos of this year’s recipients can be found here: http://www.fcny.org/fcny/core/sae/.

By patrick honner, 14 yearsNovember 17, 2011 ago

Appreciation

Floor Numbers

Not only did I enjoy the use of negative numbers in elevators in Portugal, but I like how they addressed their hotel rooms.

And it’s always nice coming home to a prime number at night!

By patrick honner, 14 yearsNovember 16, 2011 ago

Google Public Data Explorer

Google’s Public Data Explorer is a great, free resource for students and teachers interested in data science and statistics.

http://www.google.com/publicdata/home

The site allows you to create custom graphs of available data sets, making it easy to experiment with different representations and explore the meaning of data.

There are several data sets available to play around with. The OECD Factbook alone provides a wealth of raw data on education, energy, employment, population and migration, and many other categories. There are also data sets available from the U.S. Census and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. There appears to be support for using your own data sets, as well.

The data can be represented in a variety of ways: histograms, line graphs, and even dynamic time series are all available. It’s a great way to play around with data, and to build skill and intuition in data analysis, interpretation, and representation.

By patrick honner, 14 yearsNovember 15, 2011 ago

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: