Celebrate the parade of odds!  http://www.oddday.net/

I’ve lots to say about the flurry of ongoing excitement over Multiplication Facts, as they were, but as long as they continue to torment and elude many a young person (and older person, come to think of it), I shall continue to look for ways to make it a smoother ride.  The other day in the course of perusing my favorite algebra text, I came across a very old book that might do just that for some with a sense of humor and/or a taste for the old-fashioned.  (I’m never sure what “old-fashioned” refers to, but I’m quite sure that this qualifies.)  It’s called Marmaduke Multiply’s, and as far as I can tell it was originally published in 1841.  It’s been reprinted several times since, as demonstrated by the fact that you can order a copy for which you’ll be asked to pay anywhere from $.01 to $209.99.  To get a taste of it, and read about the pages that were modified along the way, have a look at Google’s book search.

Enjoy…

So there I was, ready to brush up on my trigonometry, when I discovered to my amazement that the high school textbook I’d saved from my own early math years was next to useless.  The explanations were awkward and convoluted, the examples didn’t seem to illustrate the accompanying instructions, and the diagrams barely supported the text. I spent a few minutes awash in astonishment that I’d learned anything at all in the company of the book before deciding that perhaps I’d prefer to do my brushing up with a more cooperative text.  I was just about to call a friend who might have also saved a trig book when I remembered a little book my mom got me for my birthday one year. I think she bought it because she liked the looks of it and she still can’t believe she successfully raised a math-loving child. It’s a little tiny hardback called Useful Mathematical & Physical Formulae.
It features a little cartoon wizard who can be found throughout the book helping to demonstrate and illustrate various concepts. He makes the whole thing entertaining as well as useful. And it’s not just formulas - there are lots of helpful reminders about where the formulas came from as well as enough to explain many of them to beginners. It’s also artfully done - the kind of math book you might enjoy even if you definitely don’t enjoy math. It turned out that the section about trig was just exactly what I needed to remind myself how it all works, with the circles and the right triangles, etc. It’s a great gift for a math lover, and a great reference for anyone who uses the stuff. Thanks, Mom.

I consistently find that it’s easier to generate excitement for math when it’s called something else.  (A game, for example, even when it shamelessly involves multiplication, is drastically better received when it’s called a game than when it’s called math.)  I’m beginning to think that it would be wise if we retired the word math for awhile.  It’s come to embody, represent, and inspire such dread, fear, loathing, and hostility (often compounding over the course of generations) that I think it deserves a break.  And many of us deserve a break from it.

This is not at all to say that we should stop doing the things we’ve come to refer to as math.  Just that we could stop using the word.  For now.  Not only does it inspire the less-than-healthy and productive states I mentioned above, our general understanding of what it actually is has been whittled down to something that could only appeal to a very few humans who happen to function in a particular way.  Math, defined broadly, is the kind of stuff anyone could find a home in; not just those who happen to have a proclivity for memorizing columns of numbers, or substituting letters for numbers in some prescribed manner.   There is room in the math I know for artists, builders, designers, extraverts, poets, chefs.  And room for it in all of their various pursuits.  When treated well and generously conceived, math has the ability to invite, inspire, and intrigue.

The earliest mathematicians were a varied lot.  To them math was a playful, welcoming thing.  They’d have been sorry, I’m sure, to hear it spoken of today as it is.  So perhaps we should shelve the word, breathe some life back into the observation, rendering, and capturing of pattern, relationship, quantity, and then invite it back to the party when we can treat it as the spacious entity we deserve to have it be.

I’ve been doing fractions for several decades, and only yesterday did I find out how the numerator (the number on the top) and the denominator (the one on the bottom) got their names. I’m not sure that knowing why they’re called what they’re called will help too many folks who struggle with fractions, but I’m pretty sure it will help a few, so here goes. Read more

If you’re interested in exploring this question, there’s a book that can help: Family Math: the Middle School Years, Algebraic Reasoning and Number Sense. Two of the games I’ve found to be most popular with 9-14 year-olds happen to come from this book, but it’s the approach to algebra that makes it really stand out. I was never introduced to algebra until 9^th grade, at which point I learned a series of rules and procedures. An approach like that can work  for those who happen to like learning math for its own sake, but I know a lot of young people who don’t. The algebra activities in this book offer a conceptual basis for the x’s and y’s of algebra that you can introduce to younger children.  When it’s time to attempt a more formal algebra program later on, they’ll have some idea as to what it’s all about. Using real-life situations (like a brother and sister taking stock of their music collections), the book offers ways to get why anyone would ever need algebra.

This book is not the kind of thing you can hand to a young person and send him or her off to use for independently learning. The activities require active engagement on the part of multiple parties. (For more independence-friendly algebra, I recommend Key to Algebra or Elementary Algebra.) I don’t recommend it for families who have a lot of strife swirling around their math lives. This is a book for supplementing whatever else you’re doing with math, and getting kids ready for algebra and more involved mathematical thinking.

Family Math: the Middle School Years… is available new or used at amazon…

The title of Key Press’ Mathercise series is as accurate as could be – every page is exercise for the math brain. The pages contain three problems each – one reasoning, one solving, one sketching. As with other Key Press materials, the book doesn’t seem to put off students by crowding too much on a page. I’d love to see even more variety in the nature of the “solve” questions, but for keeping minds in shape for math, it’s great as is. (Key usually offers sample pages with their product descriptions, but they don’t have one posted for Mathercise. I called and asked to see a sample page, and they sent me one by email.)

There are five titles in the series, starting with a pre-algebra/algebra level and finishing with a book intended for use with advanced algebra and pre-calculus students.

You can get it right from Key Press or from amazon…