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The square root of two
In first year maths, they briefly study the five families of number: the natural numbers N, the integers Z, the rational numbers Q, the real numbers R, and the complex numbers C. In particular, they focus on the distinction between the rational numbers and the real numbers. A classic proof they are given at this time is one that the number √2 is irrational. This blog post is about some alternative proofs.
Sleeping through Miss Marple
My wife and I like to watch mystery shows together like Poirot, Midsomer Murders and Miss Marple. Unfortunately I have a slight problem: when watching television in a comfortable position, I tend to drift in and out of sleep, no matter how interesting the show might be. This can be quite disasterous for mystery shows, especially ones with major unexpected plot twists.
Inspiration, not instructions
We have a big on the MLC wall that gives students advice for solving problems. One of those pieces of advice is that to decide what to do for your current problem, you could look at other problems for inspiration. Yesterday I saw the dangerous results of what happens if you look at other problems for instructions rather than inspiration.
Jack Frost's centre
On the weekend I watched the film "Rise of the Guardians" by Dreamworks Pictures, and it is a very enjoyable film. In it, Jack Frost is enlisted by the Man in the Moon to join the Guardians of Childhood—who already have Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Sandman and the Tooth Fairy in their ranks—and together they fight the evil Pitch Black, who is the Bogeyman.
Complex is not the same as complicated
The Complex Numbers are unfortunately named. Most people take the word complex to mean "difficult to understand", so the very name we give this family of numbers sets students up to think it's going to be a lot of hard work to understand them. This is sad, because they really are very very cool and not quite as difficult as people make them out to be.
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