Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Infinity
Infinity is a concept represented by a symbol that has no end to it. It isn't referred to as a number, it is larger than all numbers. The origin of the creation of the actual symbol itself isn't anything anyone knows for sure. A man name John Wallis was said to have introduced it in 1655.
The concept of infinity is a little hard to grasp in my opinion, something that goes on forever with no real conclusion
is just an odd thought. There aren't many infinite things in our life, one that comes to mind is space. Space is infinite, we have no idea what is our there for billions of miles because it is infinite. We just know within a certain range but there are many more things out there that we may never know about.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Hating math?
As a child, there are TV shows where the kids hate math and despise math to the point that it influences their childhood early on before they may even have a real math class. On the other hand, there are cartoons such as "School House Rock" who show math and other subjects in school in a positive way. I think that this has a big influence on how our minds view school and more specifically math. So to answer the question of why people hate math, I believe it is because they think it is hard or they don't think it is necessarily the cool thing to love.
I personally love Algebra as my math class, I have had a mix of both amazing and horrible math teachers when I was younger so I have gone back and forth on whether I like it or not. In elementary school, most of my math teachers either didn't teach or were just hateful and boring. I had one teacher in 4th grade who called herself "The Hulk" which is not really a name you want your 10 year old kids to call you. She was not only scary, but she was also just a bad teacher for my learning tastes, maybe to others she was helpful not at all to me. She is the one who really made me hate math over the years until I got the better teachers. Since about 6th grade I have had the great teachers who have turned me on to it. Even if I did not understand they made sure I got the help I needed and gave me opportunities to bring up my grade and understand what I got wrong. When I got to Booker T. I got Ms. Jalivand as my Geometry teacher and even though I didn't particularly like Geometry, she made it interesting and really made me enjoy the classand I looked forward to attending every other day.
Math education could improve in the way that they include a lot of interesting ways to learn. Math can be interesting, it isn't all dry, boring material. It can actually be fun to do, in some cases. I enjoy that in math, there is generally one correct answer and there are many correct ways of finding that answer. I still look forward to going to math class and doing algebraic equations even though at times I am challenged by it.
In all, math just really interests me. It isn't that I plan on being a mathematician or any other job in that field but math is still used everyday whether people realize it or not, and it really is one of the most vital subjects to learn while in school.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Data
In class on Thursday we learned about using our calculators to enter data and we watched a youtube video about it as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w
It actually interested me and I enjoyed entering all the data. I went home and watched the rest and watched as the countries got smaller and bigger and moved all around. I would love to be able to play around on that same program.
We also learned about correlation pasterns. There are strong, weak, positive, negative, correlations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w
It actually interested me and I enjoyed entering all the data. I went home and watched the rest and watched as the countries got smaller and bigger and moved all around. I would love to be able to play around on that same program.
We also learned about correlation pasterns. There are strong, weak, positive, negative, correlations.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
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