Home Posts tagged "maths" (Page 2)

Tag: maths

Complex numbers

What happens when you try to take the square root of -1?

Here are some useful examples.

Plus magazine

Here is an online magazine with some really great content -from introductory to quite advanced.  A good source of ideas and explanations.

Having trouble with Limits?

Here is a lovely, simple explanation of how limits and infinitesimals work (and when they don’t).

Well worth a read, because it isn’t afraid to tell the whole story in non-technical language.

Maths teaching (video)

Here‘s maths teacher Dan Meyer talking about how to get people buying into maths problems by asking a simple question and removing all the spoon-feeding steps (including plugging numbers into formulae).

This man is super-enthusiastic, as well as a very clear thinker.

How can I plot functions easily?

I’ve used the full version of Mathematica and it’s a tour de force. It’s also massively more sophisticated than most people need (as well as hugely overpriced).

So try this cut-down online version.

Try typing in  Plot sin (x^2) / e^x or something…

 

How to deal with Trigonometry (> 90 degrees)?

Trigonometry gets confusing at angles bigger than a right angle because you can’t draw a little triangle and say ‘opposite over hypotenuse’ or whatever.

Rather than adopt some kind of handle-turning approach (eg C.A.S.T.), that may get you the correct result but which doesn’t add to understanding, try thinking in terms of the graphs of the trig. functions eg Sin x. This allows you to use the symmetry in these plots to see why you get the answers (rather than just remembering some opaque formula).

 

 

What is the future of education? -Khan Academy

Sometimes, if you aren’t getting a new concept, it’s really useful to hear someone else’s version.

Here is a video about Khan Academy. This represents the future of education and is also a great place to get an additional perspective on a wide variety of interesting topics.