books
When the Penguin Group publishing company contacted me to see if I was interested in reviewing Danica McKellar’s popular books, Math Doesn’t Suck, and Kiss My Math, I jumped at the chance. No, it wasn’t for the free books. The time I spend reading and writing doesn’t justify the cost savings. I review products I believe in. Period. For the sake of full disclosure, I received a free copy of each of the two books. That’s it.
Danica McKellar is a well-known actress, a mathematician, and an advocate for Math education. I’m delighted to see people with a tremendous amount of influence use that influence to make Math more accessible.
Not summer reading. Summer books. Summer reading has been a little more than half of Mike and Sue Klonsky’s small schools book, and a few slow chapters of First Farmers, The Origins of Agricultural Society (which may be just a tad too technical for me, but it is fascinating when I force myself to struggle with it). I also snagged a copy of The Atlas of Changing South Africa (revised 2001, I once skimmed the original 1994 edition), but I have more dipped in to read maps than actually read text.
Ah, but summer books! I picked up a buttload of birthday presents last month (half a year late on the pickup):
- Bad Blood (Linda Fairstein). I have no idea what it is, but she was a District Attorney here in New York? I think I have to read this.
- Phillip’s Atlas of World History. For the collection. I have quite a few old maps and atlases, and current atlases, and historical atlases. And this one is new to me (not just the binding, the individual maps as well.
- A People’s History of American Empire (Howard Zinn). Nope, I didn’t already have this. I will dip into it here and there, but I don’t plan to read it straight through.
- cartographica extraordinaire. The Historical Map Transformed. (Rumsey and Punt) Wow. True coffee table book. The publisher, ESRI, is a major GIS vendor. This 13″ x 14″ hardcover blends historical maps with modern data via GIS and related computer mapping. The results are gorgeous. Stunning.
(other late-pickup presents were a set of wooden dominoes, hetian rose — it’s a tea, but what is it? who knows? — and two teas, one white, one green, labeled only in Chinese)
My reading to do list:
- Read Bad Blood
- Finish Collapse (I got done with the fun stuff, but bogged down in Jared Diamond’s conclusions)
- Finish Klonsky, and write a review.
- Finish First Farmers? Nah, I think I will restart next summer. Or over a vacation.
- I saw a review in The New Yorker for a new book called Traffic - Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt . I think I want to read it.
- Find and read a readable math book (read no math this summer. Boo. Hiss. Maybe H.A. Thurston’s The Number System?)
A while ago I discovered an interesting web site, Berkeley Science Books, that publishes a set of very comprehensive Ebooks called “Calculus Without Tears.” Author Will Flannery has a pretty detailed explanation on the home page of his web-site of why he thinks Calculus can be taught in elementary school. His view is that Calculus in college is bogged down with lots of theory; if you change the focus of Calculus to application first and theory later, and if you teach the fundamentals of Calculus that don’t require algebra, trigonometry, or geometry (except for the formula for the area of a rectangle) then you can teach Calculus to 4th graders. Flannery sees the motivation for all of mathematics, beyond basic arithmetic, to be physics, and the building basics - derivatives, integrals, and differential equations, which are fundamental to physics and to Calculus - can be taught to those with no mathematical sophistication.
Flannery questions the wisdom of the Math and science curriculum teaching algebra, geometry, and trigonometry before teaching the physics that drives the need for these other branches of mathematics. To be honest, part of me agrees with Flannery and part of me doesn’t. I’ve always enjoyed pure and recreational Math. I absolutely love Math for the sake of doing Math. I love the logic, the creativity, the problem solving, the beauty, the joy, and the elegance of mathematics. But, I get that I’m not typical. Many people find Math to be too abstract and don’t see the value of manipulating abstractions. For those people I can see the value of learning Math in a very concrete fashion. I can see the value in approaching Math from the desire to understand how our physical world works, starting with basic formulas for force and distance, and proceeding from there. I believe that someone with an engineering mindset or teachers who want to approach Math from the very concrete will really appreciate Flannery’s books. I’m not an educator so I can’t speak to what works best in the classroom. I would suspect that a combination of concrete and abstract might work best but I’m not sure in what combination or sequence.
I remember riding the subway to high school in the late 1970’s. I rode from Manhattan to the Bronx five days a week for four years. When I wasn’t chatting with one of the other kids I’d often be reading some “Mathy” thing or working out a Math problem. Yes, I was geeky even back then. A number of my very favorite mathematical excursions came from Martin Gardner’s “Mathematical Games” column in Scientific American. Gardner’s column ran from 1956 to 1986. Gardner is one of my Math heroes, and I know his writing is enjoyed by many many people who enjoy recreational mathematics. In my opinion, Gardner has done more than anyone to popularize recreational Math in the US.
Over the years I’ve read a number of Gardner’s books and enjoyed many of his diversions. A year ago for my birthday I received a copy of Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Games CD, published by the Mathematical Association of America. The CD contains every single one of Gardner’s articles in Scientific American. Wow! I was pleased.
Blue Balliett wrote several novels that we used in our classroom with great success. Her first book was Chasing Vermeer, a mystery developed around a missing painting by Johannes Vermeer. The second book, The Wright 3, had the Frank Lloyd Wright Robie House as its main focus. I really liked the historical connection in the novels and the kids immediately warmed to the main characters. I liked the connections with primary sources; the paintings, the blueprints, the original photos.
technology and the Internet. We did our first classroom wiki as a culminating project for our reading of The Wright 3. I discussed the wiki in a previous post Wikis in the Classroom.