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Appreciation Numbers
10/26/2016 — Happy Permutation Day!
Today we celebrate a Permutation Day! I call days like today permutation days because the digits of the day and the month can be rearranged to form the year.
We can also consider today a Transposition Day, as we need only a single transposition (an exchange of two numbers) to turn the year into the day and date.
Celebrate Permutation Day by mixing things up! Try doing things in a different order today. Just remember, for some operations, order definitely matters!
Resources Teaching
Math Horizons Editorial
I am proud to have contributed an editorial to the November issue of Math Horizons magazine, a publication of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA).
In my essay, “I Love Teaching Math, Maybe You Will Too“, I attempt to convey the excitement, challenge, and fulfillment of being a math teacher. Those who study math have many career options, and while math teacher is not necessarily a glamorous job, it can be a great one. And one that I think deserves more consideration.
The essay appears in the Aftermath section of the magazine, and is available both in print and on the MAA’s blog. You can read my essay here, and see the full November issue of Math Horizons here.
Related Posts
NYT Resources Statistics
Teaching with the ASA’s Election Prediction Contest
My latest piece for the NYT Learning Network gets students using statistics and data analysis to create entries for the American Statistical Association‘s Election Prediction contest.
The ASA’s contest invites students to predict the winner of each state in the upcoming Presidential election, as well as the vote-share for each major party candidate. My piece offers students some basic strategies to consider when making their predictions.
A straightforward strategy for predicting the winner of each state would be to use the latest aggregate polling data from a reputable source. The New York Times offers a state-by-state probabilities chart that provides a projected outcome for each state as determined by each of several media outlets, including The Times itself as well as FiveThirtyEight and Daily Kos, among others.
Students could choose one of the outlets to use as the basis for their predictions, but to satisfy the written requirement of the contest they should be prepared to provide some justification for their choice. For example, they could research each outlet’s methodology and explain why they found one more compelling than another (perhaps more polls are used from each state, or the predictions have been more stable over time).
In addition to introducing students to several basic prediction strategies, there are plenty of links to online resources where students can explore visualizations of voting trends and research historical voting data. The lesson is freely available here.
The ASA’s contest ends October 24th, so get predicting!
3D Printing Appreciation Resources
Henry Segerman at MoMath
Mathematician, artist, and 3D-printing virtuoso Henry Segerman will be speaking at the Museum of Mathematics on October 5th, 2016.
Henry is currently a professor at Oklahoma State University, where he researches geometry, topology, and mathematical visualization. His mathematical 3D printing is truly amazing: to start, you can check out his triple gears, stereographic projections, and Hilbert curves. And he has recently published a book, Visualizing Mathematics with 3D Printing, that includes companion 3D prints that readers can download for free and print themselves! He is also involved in fascinating work in spherical video (see this spherical droste video for an example) and virtual reality, and has been featured in several Numberphile videos.
Henry will be giving a talk as part of MoMath’s Math Encounters series. His talk is titled “3D Shadows: Casting Light on the Fourth Dimension”, and is sure to make for a fascinating evening. I am proud and excited to be introducing Henry, whom I’ve known for many years, and whose work inspires me both as a mathematician and as a teacher.
You can find out more about the event and register here.
UPDATE: The museum has made Henry’s full talk is available here.