Here is Albert Einstein’s small ad. for his services as a tutor in Mathematics and Physics.
Although never the world’s best mathematician, the number one Physicist of all time was uber-determined and a patient teacher. I’m sure that his students got good grades.
(I notice he offered a free trial lesson).
We knew this already, but here is some corroboration for the idea that one-to-one tutoring is highly effective.
Mind you, it depends on the tutor…and the tutee.
“…data from the 13 million students who took PISA tests showed that the lowest achieving students worldwide were those who used a memorization strategy – those who thought of math as a set of methods to remember and who approached math by trying to memorize steps. The highest achieving students were those who thought of math as a set of connected, big ideas.”
It really is important that maths teachers stop teaching handle-turning methods and equating speed of solution with ability. See more here.
I love this little tale about Albert Einstein who helped explain a little girl’s maths homework -almost daily, for four years.
What a decent thing to do.
Ok, so this is a pretty contrived little problem, but it shows the mindset of mathematicians and offers a neat, generally applicable answer.
Enjoy!
I just came across this wonderfully clear explanation of division by zero.
It also gives a nice introduction to the ideas of undefined (‘leads to a contradiction’) and indeterminate (‘is true for any value of x’).
Aside from being suddenly very much better at Mathematics (due to working with your friendly neighbour tutor 😉 )here are some cool questions which you can use to puzzle your teacher.
They sometimes look simple but are actually fiendishly difficult.
This is a beauty:
I really admire Steven Strogatz…someone who can undertake cutting-edge applied maths research and yet also explain the subject with respect for learners.
“In teaching, you should tell the truth and nothing but the truth -but not the whole truth.”
If you are struggling to remember your exact trignometric ratios, here is a useful aide memoire.
Patrick Andrews has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Heriot-Watt University and an MSc in Neuroscience from the University of Cambridge.
A former Chartered Engineer and Chartered Mathematician, Patrick has worked in management consultancies and high-tech startups, and in academia as a postdoc in Applied Mathematics at Cambridge and a maths lecturer at De Montfort University.
Patrick is the father of three delightful (but not uniformly mathematical!) daughters.