Category: Explain It!

Here’s a little garden design project I tried, with an interesting mathematical basis.

Ironic that the BBC publish this story about innumeracy, when they have done so much to perpetuate the myth that being bad at mathematics, or anything scientific, is acceptable.

Anyone who wants to be considered educated should have a solid grounding in mathematics (not just numeracy).  As great teachers become rarer, so they create fewer great teachers and it gets harder to find the expertise needed to help understand the material.

If they are really interested in supporting the UK’s economy and culture, maybe John Humpries, Carol Vorderman, Jonathan Ross et al. could donate a fraction of their enormous incomes to create a prize fund for outstanding science teachers?  (Let’s make the fraction sum easy…say 1/10 ?).

So, if you are left feeling that all this Mathematics and Physics are a bit esoteric and nothing to do with real life…take a look at this animation.

I’d say yes, but only if they are used as a medium to help explain things to small groups ie not as an automated version of current, ineffective, classroom ‘teaching’.

Take a look at this article.

Astronauts in orbit are still strongly attracted to the Earth by gravity. So why do they float about as if they were in deep space, far from any big masses?

Here is a nice simple blog post which gets across the basics. For a more general/detailed explanation…I have tutorial sheets available!

It seems that some aspects of the various Mathematics curricula in Scotland are working well in comparison with the English system.  There is still a long way to go to make Maths as popular and well taught as it is, for example, in Finland.