quod erat demonstrandum
There is a great little book entitled QED - Beauty in Mathematical Proof that I keep on my desk at school - not as a resource for juicy example questions to use in class lectures, but as something to...
The Monty Hall Problem
Like much of mathematics, without much effort it is certainly possible to teach probability in a stale and uninteresting way. I find that engaging the students with some well known probability paradoxes...
Probability, Coincidences and Birthdays
On our past two family holidays, my family and I have experienced very unlikely (or at least what we felt to be very unlikely) coincidences - namely, having chance meetings with people we know well while...
Snow Day
There are plusses and minuses of living in any particular location – and one of the plusses of teaching in the north of Scotland is that during the winter months we sometimes get enough snow that school...
Thinking About the Unit Circle
I often think about the unit circle - more specifically, I visualize it in my mind when evaluating the exact value of a trigonometric function (sine, cosine & tangent to be precise) for a 'special' angle...
Proof & TOK #1
Along with teaching Math SL and Math HL, I've also been involved in teaching Theory of Knowledge (TOK) for the past 12 years. One of the reasons I enjoy teaching TOK is for the opportunity to explore...
Student Explorations - Part 1
The last two blog entries made mention of ideas that may be conducive for a student exploration for the new internal assessment program. A significant concern for me with the new internal assessment is...
A Timely Exploration
At the end of my previous blog entry, I suggested that the mathematics involved in how the Equation of Time is determined by summing two sine curves (each from the variation of 'sun' time due to the earth's...
Equation of Time
Continuing from the last post with a slight pre-occupation with the nature and passing of time at this point in the calendar (i.e. start of a new year) ... some of the more interesting things I have learned...
Infinity of Infinities
Around this time of the year - end of one year and start of another - the topic of time, its nature and how it seems to pass by, often comes up in private reflection and public discussions. On the last...