Thoughts on the teaching and learning of mathematics
Reduced Fat Milk and Milkfat Here’s an activity that my friend Nic Vitale and I wrote for MTMS‘ Math for Real and then found out that they had published something similar (Bu & Marjanovich, 2017) so they decided not to publish our article. It’s funny that Nic contacted me about this situation and we wrote it … Continue reading Percentages and Milk
Here’s a math problem I thought of when I was driving today involving points and lines. Continue reading Points and Lines
Something I’ve been thinking about is the way we teach students to solve systems of linear equations using substitution. Consider for example the following system of linear equations: y = 3x + 4 and 2y – 3x = 16. Many textbooks would suggest the way forward is to solve one of the equations for a … Continue reading Solve for y and substitute?
Teachers typically emphasize two techniques (though there are certainly others) for solving systems of equations: substitution and elimination. The other day I asked my class of prospective middle and secondary teachers to explain why elimination works. I asked this because as I was sitting at my kitchen table that morning, My students were not able … Continue reading Why does elimination work?
