Making Your Own Sense
Reflections on maths, learning, and the Maths Learning Centre.
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Can I take a cheat sheet?
The first maths exams for the year are tomorrow, so recently I've been talking to more and more students about exams. To be clear, I'm not complaining about this! It's a really important part of the MLC's role to give students advice about exams, since they have such a huge impact on the students' experience of learning maths at uni. We can make a big difference to people by simply helping them cope with this stressful time.
"Helping" Hands
In recent weeks, a new artwork has appeared on the walls of Hub central. They used to have people's faces, and now they have people's hands in various poses.
The Road to Royalty
Last week, I met His Royal Highness Edward the Duke of Kent. I'd like to tell you the story of how this came about.
Statistics and Insomnia
Some years ago, I saw a snippet on the ABC science show Catalyst about insomnia – in particular, the flavour of insomnia where a person has trouble falling asleep at all. They reported on a trial study investigating the effectiveness of a tortuous new treatment for chronic insomnia. (You can find the published research here: .)
The cos rule without cos
Ever since I first learned it, I've always loved the cos rule. It says that if a triangle has two sides a and b, with an angle of C between them, then the remaining side c can be found in this way: c2 = a2 + b2 - 2ab cos C.
Mathematical collocations
There is a phrase people use when talking about statistics that really bugs me. It's "non-parametric data". I see it all the time in statistical teaching materials and I hate it because I know what they mean, but what they've said is simply wrong. Whoever writes this phrase has a tenuous grasp of what the word non-parametric means. If they really understood what it meant, they would realise that the word non-parametric can only be used to apply to a statistical procedure, not to the data itself; the words "non-parametric" and "data" just can't be put together like that.
The Pied Mathematician of Hamelin
Have you ever been in a situation and felt like you were reliving a scene from a book or movie? Well it happened to me the other day when I went to visit my daughter's school. I felt exactly like I was the piper in the Pied Piper of Hamelin, because an ever-growing crowd of children followed me across the oval as I walked in.
Bathelling in assignments
The Deeper Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd defines the word bathel like this:
Quick Iggle Piggle! Catch Makka Pakka's Og-Pog before it hits the Ninky Nonk!
The CLPD head administrator Cathy told me a story the other day about an experience she had on the train: She was sitting opposite a pair of students, and one was helping the other prepare for a test. The first student was reading out words from a stack of cards and the second was trying to correctly say what they mean. After listening to this for a while, Cathy leaned over and asked what it was they were studying. The students said "pure maths".
[Read more about Quick Iggle Piggle! Catch Makka Pakka's Og-Pog before it hits the Ninky Nonk!]
Dagwood Dogs at the Gawler show
I went to the Gawler Show with my family the weekend before last, and it was a wonderful day. We had camel and pony rides, patted the animals, looked at all the stalls, bought some toys, got given balloons and generally had a most excellent day.
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