Interactive mathematics

Some math ed tech links

Check out Hypernom, the new 4-D math game from Vi Hart and partners in (crime?) Andrea Hawksley (AH) and Henry Segerman. It’s pretty crazy — and beautiful. Nom nom nom. I can’t believe I missed this for so long. I got the link from a post on MathMunch, which is itself a very fun blog on […]

Reflections on the IMA Modeling Camp

I had the opportunity to help with this years IMA/MathCEP mathematical modeling camp a few weeks ago and wanted to share my thoughts on it. Daniel Schulthies organized the camp and followed the SIAM modeling guide fairly closely. We picked modeling topics which were local, current, and which there was enough data about. We did a cursory search […]

Desmos: a really fancy calculator, but much more

The Twittersphere recently made me aware of Desmos, a really fancy online graphing calculator. Fortunately, I was not introduced to it as such: I found it through a blog by a math teacher that now and then features a “maths gems” post — little tidbits of interest to mathy people and math teachers. The gems post that […]

Lightweight math apps

Something I’ve seen more and more of lately is very lightweight apps that deal with algebra or other K-12 math topics. Last night I met the creator of Algebra Touch, Sean Berry. Algebra Touch is a pretty app that lets you play with algebra expressions: you can simplify, add, divide, factor, and more with a touch […]

People love math (but they don’t know it)

The recent viral hit game 2048 is one reason I have not posted in a little while. (The other factors are midterm grading for two classes and a great week-long research binge with a collaborator.) 2048 is a simple and hauntingly addictive game — you just move pieces left, right, up, down, until two 2s combine to […]

Recent reading

We recently had a (small) in-person LIMIT institute meeting, and a big topic of discussion was Making Math. This is a company that came out of the work UIUC has been doing in online and distance math education, discussed briefly in a previous post. I owe you all a longer write-up about this. If you’re […]

Interactive math exploration: RSK and other combinatorics

For a year and a half I have been musing about what kinds of technological experimentation with pure math concepts could be truly different on a smartphone or tablet, as opposed to ye old piece of paper, and combinatorial games that check for mistakes are one of the things I’ve come up with. I want […]

Math online: links to textbooks and resources

I almost forgot to mention another set of conversations I had at the Joint Math Meetings, about open textbooks. Textbook prices are a real factor in the affordability of college; since in college I paid for textbooks through money I earned waiting tables I certainly paid attention to options cheaper than buying new. I still […]

Other players in online education

Just a collection of things I learned about at the 2014  Joint Math Meetings: There’s an organization called ITHAKA that is working on helping academics use digital technologies. It’s the folks behind JSTOR, the online journal storage organization. These are non-profit groups. On my first visit to ITHAKA’s webpage I found the link to William […]

Sketchometry

Sketchometry is another intriguing approach to interactive mathematics, especially on touch devices. I’ve tried it out a little bit on my iPad, and while there is some learning curve, I was able to graph some functions and draw a bit. I am particularly interested in the touch aspect of the program. Bringing the kinetic into mathematics […]