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This strongly reminds me of the various math magazines we have here in Germany. (I know that other countries have similar magazines, but I only grew up with the
by vog 9y ago
This strongly reminds me of the various math magazines we have here in Germany. (I know that other countries have similar magazines, but I only grew up with the German ones, except for one Canadian one.)
The most popular seems to be "Wurzel" [1] (translated: "root").
The target audience of the magazines are students (pupils) at school, as well as young students at university. The articles explain advanced math topics. Not too advanced, of course, but still far outside what they see in school. The articles use formalisms only where they make things more clear. They build on common school knowledge. Advanced formalisms are only okay if they are introduced in the article. And the articles aren't too long. The goal is that everything can be understood by students, if they are interested.
Also, the magazines usually contain reports about math olympiads and similar activities, usually written by participants (i.e. by students, not teachers).
Finally, these contain math exercises. But don't think of school exercises. Think of math olympiad, just that you have more time to solve them. Students send their solutions in and it is published in the magazine which students solved which exercise successfully.
The latter one should not be underestimated - it is more or less how all these magazines started: You have math competition, the students go back to school, and you want to keep in touch with them, so you offer them so solche math puzzles in their free time, give them feedback to their solutions, and do everything they don't feel alone with their mathematical interests. You can do that individually only with so many students, so you start a magazine for a more efficient communication.
[1] http://wurzel.org/ http://wurzel.org/
- jonnybgood 9y agoYou reminded me of Chalkdust [0]. I would love to see more publications along these lines. [0] http://chalkdustmagazine.com http://chalkdustmagazine.com
- vog 9y agoVery nice site! Too bad they don't offer an RSS feed, so it's hard for me to keep in touch with that site.
- ColinWright 9y agoDoesn't this work? http://chalkdustmagazine.com/feed/ http://chalkdustmagazine.com/feed/
- vog 9y agoThat's strange. Didn't find it, now it's there. Did they just add it? I'm using the TLS version, though: https://chalkdustmagazine.com/feed/ https://chalkdustmagazine.com/feed/
- ColinWright 9y agoDid you try that link/URL earlier? Perhaps you were trying other links, and this one was, in fact, always there. How were you previously trying to find the RSS feed? It's still not obvious to me from the front page that it exists.
- mathgenius 9y ago> far outside what they see in school There's so much cool mathematics out there that school kids can understand given a good enough teacher. It's really disappointing to me the crud that gets taught in school, but then i remember that a big part of this is the teachers just aren't that inspired. All it takes is one or two good teachers to really change a kids outlook on mathematics.
- briandear 9y agoYou also have the problem (at least in public schools,) that teachers are obliged to “stick to the curriculum” and much of a teacher’s time is spent catering to the lowest common denominator lest the test scores fall to an unacceptable level. I might argue that kids should get a double period for math, especially earlier in their school careers — one class to teach the fundamentals, another class to simply explore. The benefit being that critical thinking is enhanced in all academic areas and not just the obvious in mathematics.
- mathgenius 9y agoI hated learning the multiplication table when I was 5. Basically, I boycotted the whole thing. It occured to me recently, why don't they talk about the holes in the multiplication table? These are the prime numbers! So easy to mention this and may have inspired my 5 year old self to dig a bit deeper. My first real mathematical experience was in second grade. My teacher had some hoops on the floor, and was putting coloured shapes inside. Red shapes in one hoop, and triangles in another hoop. But then the problem arose: what to do with the red triangles? It was total magic when she dragged one hoop to overlap with another hoop and placed the red triangle in the overlap. Venn diagrams for six year olds. And I still can't multiply six times eight! I have to work it out every time...
- dragonwriter 9y ago> It occured to me recently, why don't they talk about the holes in the multiplication table? Because there aren't any. The prime numbers would be gaps if you pivoted the table into a division table but, alas, that's not how it's presented (even in the context of teaching division.)
- yogrish 9y agoreddit.com/r/ELIF is also good for explaining any topic in a simple way so even a kid also can understand. Its Not targeted towards maths though but biology / physics/technology etc. Have a look.
- montecarl 9y agoThis reminded me of a math professor during my undergrad. He would print out copies a math problem from some journal that published these kinds of interesting problems that are pretty hard and a little different from what you normally see in class. He would then put the copies in the halls of the math building. If you could bring him your solution and explain it to him he would give you $20 and mail in your answer to the journal, who would then send you back a little certificate and publish your name in the next edition. It was by solving one of these problems (using math that was above the course I was currently taking) that I started to interact more with the math department and decided to take more advanced classes!
- mkesper 9y agoI was reminded of the book 'The number devil' (Zahlenteufel) which showed me you can reason with children about math if only you do away with intimidating language: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Number_Devil https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Number_Devil
- GuiA 9y agoThe French magazine “Tangente” is equally good. http://tangente-mag.com http://tangente-mag.com