NEWSLETTER December 2019 What's new in the world of math and education this month? |
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The topics that are taught today in mathematics classrooms are the same as they have been for decades. While every other subject has changed with the time math remains stuck with curricula writers taking little to no account for the needs of modern students. Nowhere is this more evident than in the arcane topics presented in Algebra 2. |
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Education Algebra II just doesn't add up when you figure how little it means to most students I got an A in algebra II, I think. That was long ago. I do know that I have long since forgotten whatever I learned in that course and have never used it since.That has become a national problem. Algebra II is required for graduation in 20 states and the District. Yet many experts want to discard it in favor of something more fashionable. These days, they say, students need to understand big data, a course often called statistics. | | |
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Math News Mathematician Terence Tao Proves Huge Result on Dangerous Problem Experienced mathematicians warn up-and-comers to stay away from the Collatz conjecture. It’s a siren song, they say: Fall under its trance and you may never do meaningful work again. The Collatz conjecture is quite possibly the simplest unsolved problem in mathematics — which is exactly what makes it so treacherously alluring.“This is a really dangerous problem. People become obsessed with it and it really is impossible,” said Jeffrey Lagarias, a mathematician at the University of Michigan and an expert on the Collatz conjecture. | | |
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Monthly Mind-Bending Math Video Simple problems are often the hardest to solve. One of these the, "Collatz Conjecture" seems very simple on the surface. However, once a mathematician enters the fray to attempt to prove it they almost always come away wanting. |
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Education News PISA Test Scores Cast Doubt On U.S. Education Efforts The performance of American teenagers in reading and math has been stagnant since 2000, according to the latest results of a rigorous international exam, despite a decades-long effort to raise standards and help students compete with peers across the globe.And the achievement gap in reading between high and low performers is widening. Although the top quarter of American students have improved their performance on the exam since 2012, the bottom 10th percentile lost ground, according to an analysis by the National Center for Education Statistics, a federal agency. | | |
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Math In Science Mathematical Models Provide a Snapshot of the Human Gut Microbial Community NMicrobial communities can be found everywhere—from lakes to the soil on the ground, they are omnipresent yet invisible to the naked eye. Within those environments there exist dynamic communities which fluctuate in response to environmental changes. One such example is the human gut microbiome, which is comprised of microbes that influence the overall landscape of the gut. | | |
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