this article deserves comment. i note it here in order to return to it later. here are a few thoughts from a talk that i gave this spring on the “achievement gap”. aframth2010presentation04272010
a quick note: i came across these wonderful graphics which
(i) explains things perfectly and
(ii) illustrates clearly the work that needs to be done. enjoy.
from the nytimes: Steven Strogatz is a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University. In 2007 he received the Communications Award, a lifetime achievement award for the communication of mathematics to the general public. He previously taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received the E.M. Baker Award, an institute-wide teaching prize selected solely by students. “Chaos,” his series of 24 lectures on chaos theory, was filmed and produced in 2008 by The Teaching Company. He is the author, most recently, of “The Calculus of Friendship,” the story of his 30-year correspondence with his high school calculus teacher. In this series, which appears every Monday, he takes readers from the basics of math to the baffling. check out his latest post “the joy of x”: he writes-“Algebra, for example, may have once struck you as a dizzying mix of symbols, definitions and procedures, but in the end they all boil down to just two activities — solving for x and working with formulas.
Solving for x is detective work. You’re searching for an unknown number, x. You’ve been handed a few clues about it, either in the form of an equation like 2x + 3 = 7, or, less conveniently, in a convoluted verbal description of it (as in those scary “word problems”). In either case, the goal is to identify x from the information given”. it is well worth reading. be well.
i trust that all is well. a happy new year to you. it has been six months since i last wrote a sentence in this blog! as you have perhaps surmised, brooklyn is a “black hole” which sucks up everything in sight. smile. to put it mildly, i have been a bit overwhelmed by the responsibilities of family, teaching, research, guidance, and all things brooklyn since my return to nyc in june 2009. prior to my last note i was preparing to attend the 2009 caarms conference at rice university in houston.
rice university, houston texas
on my return to south hadley, ma from houston texas i loaded up my belongings, said my goodbyes
goodbye to south hadley
and headed home to the peoples republic of brooklyn.
welcome home madiba
on my return to mec in july, i was tasked with teaching a course for intermediate algebra students and another one on math for elementary school teachers. the intermediate algebra reminded me of the very real challenges our community faces as we try to widen the circle of literacy. one strategy for dealing with this came to me during my math for elementary school teachers. it was a challenging and wonderful experience and it led me to initiate the development of a medgar evers college math circle. this effort i hope will begin to bear some fruit in few years. thus far we have been able to pilot a small bit of our material at the immaculate heart of mary middle school in brooklyn. the 6th, 7th and 8th graders were very receptive to some of the material presented and my intuition suggests that this type of effort can play a positive role in changing attitudes towards the learning of mathematics among middle and high school students in brooklyn. the goal now is to find some funding for this endeavor. check out the intro lecture. mathcircleinitiative02012010 . another project in which i have been involved is the “free text book movement”, the idea is to use technology to ultimately eliminate the cost of the text for college students, in particular the poor one. Here is the goal-this is primarily the work of john velling at brooklyn college and i have been involved small role in aiding the roll out and refinement of this effort. check out an early version of the online calculus text. i used this last semester in my in my precalculus class and i am using it again in both my precalculus and calculus classes. this is the future. folks should also check out this excellent online resource for children. for those of you hooked on the iphone check out this article: algebra comes to the iphone. recently i visited san francisco as part of my efforts on this front. i am part of a small project which is designed to create experiences such as this for our undergraduates.
math@mec in san francisco
at some point i would like this to be a standard part of the experience of our majors at mec. it is important not to be diverted from the task. a recent article questions the efficacy of the “algebra for all” programs. this is a generational project. it’s slow tough going. smile and be well.
i’ll try to write a bit more frequently this year.
trust that all is well. a quick note in response to many comments received on the african fractal stuff. here is an introduction to some of the current current thinking on this matters. the speaker is robert devaney. a personal note: i owe bob devaney a personal debt of gratitude. it was a course on his book that that opened my eyes to the world of living mathematics. the pictures are beautiful and the logic clear. take a look at the presentation.
1. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaqKT41HR3M&hl=en&fs=1&] .
2. for a little more weird try zooming in on a mandelbrot set.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_GBwuYuOOs&hl=en&fs=1&]
3. Finally, for some explanations, see [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB8m85p7GsU&hl=en&fs=1&] .
4. a nice exercise would be to view the presentation above through the lens of eglash and to eglash through these lens.
5. let’s set up a little group to learn about the mandelbrot set in the fall.
6. go kobe!
smile and be well.
while writing about the Aframath conference yesterday i was reminded of this presentation by ron eglash. i add it to the blog as a resource. the following is taken from ron eglash’s profile on ted.
Why you should listen to him?
mentalacrobatics.com [ted id=”198″]
“Ethno-mathematician” Ron Eglash is the author of African Fractals, a book that examines the fractal patterns underpinning architecture, art and design in many parts of Africa. By looking at aerial-view photos — and then following up with detailed research on the ground — Eglash discovered that many African villages are purposely laid out to form perfect fractals, with self-similar shapes repeated in the rooms of the house, and the house itself, and the clusters of houses in the village, in mathematically predictable patterns.
As he puts it: “When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganized and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn’t even discovered yet.”
His other areas of study are equally fascinating, including research into African and Native American cybernetics, teaching kids math through culturally specific design tools (such as the Virtual Breakdancer applet, which explores rotation and sine functions), and race and ethnicity issues in science and technology. Eglash teaches in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and he recently co-edited the book Appropriating Technology, about how we reinvent consumer tech for our own uses.
“Next time you bump into one of those idiots who starts asking you questions like, ‘where is the African Mozart, or where is the African Brunel?’ — implying that Africans do not think — send them a copy of Ron Eglash’s study of fractals in African architecture and watch their heads explode.”
trust that all is well. hope that you are enjoying the slowly emerging summer and some playoff basketball. in particular, i hope that you are taking the time to appreciate kobe’s nimble and mesmerizing footwork. here is a bit more of my notes from the inspiring program on african americans and mathematics, Aframath2009, held at boston university on april 25, 2009. after dean elmore’s welcome.the next speaker was don king of the department of mathematics at northeastern university in boston.
. prof. king offered reflections on mathematics and culture. as an aside, i read an article in papers this morning on this issue by nicholas kristof entitled “rising above iq”. in the article mr. kristof argues that three racial/ethnic groups that have been unusually successful in america. these groups are asian-americans, jews and west indian blacks. he suggests that there may be some lessons lurking in the “cultural dna” of these groups for the rest of us. for a critique of assorted ethnic myths: the horatio alger theory of jewish success, the cultural explanation of jewish intellectualism and catholic anti-intellectualism, the cultural basis of black poverty and the ethnic explanation of the black west indian academic success one should read the ethnic myth, race, ethnicity and class in America, by stephen steinberg. at it’s core,however, prof. king’s presentation called for an investigation of some of these ideas. he began by drawing attention to george gheverghese joseph’s, “the crest of the peacock: non-european roots of mathematics. the title, taken from an indian source of the fifth pre christian century: “like the crest of a peacock, like the gem on the head of a snake, so is mathematics at the head of all knowledge.” in this book,joseph demonstrates that human beings everywhere have been capable of innovative and advanced mathematical thinking. he traces the history of mathematics from the ishango bone in central africa and the inca quipu of south america about 20,000 years ago to the dawn of modern mathematics. bringing this spirit to the present prof. king challenged the audience to think about the innovative and mathematical thinking that has been and continues to be a part of the black community. to this end he offered the following questions for consideration: (i) what role does the “traditional” black culture play in our work? (ii)what role does the “contemporary” black culture play in our work? (iii) how does our work fit into “traditional/contemporary” black culture?(iv)what role does it play in informing, shaping, influencing “traditional/contemporary” black culture? (v) how do we integrate contemporary culture in our work as mathematicians in 2009? these are difficult questions with no easy answers. he offered a few examples. the first was sylvester james gates jr. sylvester james gates, jr. has a number of “firsts” to his name. his doctoral dissertation at M.I.T. was the first ever at that university on supersymmetry. in 1994, he became the first recipient of the American Physical Society’s Edward A. Bouchet Award, given to a minority physicist who has made significant contributions to his field. and when in 1998 he was named the first john s. toll professor of physics at the university of maryland, he became the first african-american to hold an endowed chair in physics at a major U.S. research university. prof. gates has integrated adinkra symbols [it would be nice to see a few of these as tattoos.maybe i’d come to better appreciate the art. smile] to graphs used in string theory. his next example was prof. robert hampshire who has been using an online comic to bring some ideas in operations research to a different audience. check it out. the final example was irene smalls children’s author and story teller who has been introducing math themes in her books. kobe coronation preparations call. more to come. be well.
trust all is well. it’s been a long time. for the last few weeks i have been dealing with the end of semester crush. all grades are in now so things are reverting to normal. let me once again pick up the reins on this front.
recently, i had the good fortune to participate in an inspiring program on african americans and mathematics. Aframath2009 was held at boston university on april 25, 2009. here are some of my notes from this event.
The first speaker was kenneth elmore, dean of students at boston university. 
dean elmore brought the welcome and the charge to those gathered. he began by reminding us of the african american presence in boston from the days of slavery to present. he talked about the role that university has played in the struggle for african american self determination in the city of boston, the state of massachussetts and beyond. he reminded us that the founders of boston university were self made, self taught folk who were firmly against slavery, supported strongly the rights of women and were dedicated to the education of african americans. so, he concluded that it was entirely appropriate that boston university was the site for an Aframath gathering. it was, he noted, that it was no accident that dr. martin luther king jr. received his doctoral degree from boston university in 1955. dean elmore’s point of emphasis was to direct the attention of those gathered to the importance of “pop culture” in the lives of student in general and african american students in particular. to this end he challenged us to think creatively about integrating tools of pop culture into the work of the academy. how do we integrate facebook, twitter, blogs,… into the classroom? how do we use technology to leverage our competence and our reach? what are your thoughts on how i might the use of facebook in the classroom? there was a note of urgency in dean elmore’s welcome and charge, as he talked about some recent reading, gang leader for a day, by sudhir venkatesh which investigates the lives of youths involved in gangs and offers some insight into the wasted talent in our cities. more to come. be well.
just watched michigan state beat uconn. is michigan state really better than uconn? i think not. michigan state was simply more motivated to get the job done. what is motivation? it the mental vibe that gets us up and keeps us moving toward a desired goal; it is the reason for our action; it is that which gives purpose and direction to our behavior; motivation is key to doing anything. my,now forever late, mentor prof. kodjoe would say, “anyone can do anything with enough time, motivation and help”. it is this spirit that must guide us when we participate in the business of teahing african american youth. of course this is complicated. how do i as a teacher discern, tap into the psychology that causes an individual to move in a particular direction? how do i know, a priori, their strengths and the elements of their curiosity? you can’t. so what to do? as a start, i suggest that you bring expertise and enthusiasm to the game. this might seem a small thing but expertise and energy will go a long way to alleviating the deadening effects of economic insecurity, poor housing, unsafe neighborhoods, and negative peer influences that often times overwhelm our young people and serve as obstacles to educational motivation. observe well the the beauty, the expertise and the intelligence displayed by the the young on the basketball court,and understand clearly that this is the result of serious effort and energy directed at this task. this is what we need to tap into as a community and we can start by simply raising our own game and our own energy. go villanova. more to come. be well.
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