Stirring the Life-Roads With Hand and Foot

Better than Cartoons

I've just agreed to teach a Pre-Calculus I've-Failed-And-Want-To-Graduate course on Saturday mornings, to about 15 students. 7 sessions at 3 hours apiece. Half of the students who were assigned precalculus last semester have failed it, and many of them are quite bright, but hadn't been challenged by a teacher holding them to true high-school senior honors-level standards before. So I expect I can help enough of them understand the pre-calculus Big Ideas well enough to validate their passing.

It looks like I'll have a fairly free hand in what I'll actually teach, and not a lot of time to do it in. I'd like to focus this Credit Recovery Course on the necessaries for college math, bonus points if it covers most of the Pre-Calc syllabus.

So let's have a poll, and generate some comments. What do you (dear reader) consider to be the most important skills and concepts to grasp before approaching college math (possibly calculus)?

And if any of y'all have any particularly fond classroom memories, activities, successful teaching strategies, or photocopied syllabi from pre-calc, share them. 

The last Saturday class (and the consequent exam) falls just three centimonths past Pi day. Double bonus.

Posted by: anhaga at January 31, 2007 18:37 | link | comments (2)
school

Harry Potter and the Filter of Canned Meat

Good day,

CIA_ALIS $3, 75
VAL_LIUM $1, 30
VIA_AGRA $3, 35
AMB_BIEN $2, 90
SO_MMA $1, 15

http://www.22rx*com ( Important! Replace "*" with "." )

--
I asked you whether you want me to do that again, said Voldemort
softly. Answer me! Imperial
And Harry felt, for the third time in his life, the sensation that his


Recent spam messages getting past my filter include broken excerpts from JK Rowling's novels. Passages like the above take on new meaning in the context of viagra and soma.

That is all. Go bake something.

Posted by: anhaga at January 29, 2007 19:23 | link | comments
electricity

The Useful Thing About School Uniforms...

...Is challenging public accusations about those damn kids from that highly visible high school, our powder-blue uniform billowing proudly like a flag behind us. Burgundy shirts, indeed. What irks me especially is that apparently, the color of the assailant's shirts wasn't even included in the report, yet the police spokesman said "we know the suspects were students of Highly Visible School because of the burgundy shirts of their uniforms" - so he gave the press fodder with false fact, and (despite the inconsistency of the untruth) our School became a scapegoat.

Can you tell the following apart? I sure can't.
             
             

Additional information, because sometimes it's satisfying to point fingers:

• the nearby middle school's uniform does have burgundy shirts
• many of the nearby middle school's students are older than Highly Visible School's underclassmen.

So if the burgundy observation wasn't fabricated, the Middle School students need to be addressed.
And if that item was just nonfact filling, they have an equal right to be incensed for its implication.

Fnord.

Posted by: anhaga at January 19, 2007 07:24 | link | comments
school, fnord

Beautiful Soup

I have made a soup, with dumplings.

It is delicious.

Posted by: anhaga at January 15, 2007 21:40 | link | comments (2)
food

Why we keep math out of the kitchen

so e^(π*i) = -1. Clearly, this means that if I (i) bake a pie (π), in the natural course of events (e) I shall be left with an empty dish (-1). I need to bake another pie.

If no pi at all is consumed, the equation is easily resolved:
e^(0*π•i) = e^0 = 1. My dish is full, no more pi is required.

But! If (as is the case tonight) only half the pi is eaten, we're faced with
e^(1/2*π•i) = √(e^(π*i)) = √(-1) = i.

What does it mean to have an imaginary demand for pi?

(if i == I as it did initially, this may mean there is a demand for pi perceived only by me, and that everyone else has had enough. I did, in fact, have a second helping. Perhaps i refers to the fact that more pi can yet be eaten without changing the number of pies baked?)

Baking and crust-making were complex enough for me already!

For the baking-interested, I followed Joy of Cooking's Apple Pie #I recipe for the filling, substituting a little more than an equal amount of dark brown sugar for the white, and applying liberal unmeasured amounts of cinnamon and lemon juice, with an eyeballed coating of flour into the mix, probably fairly near the prescribed amount.

The crust was Joy's Deluxe Butter Flaky Pastry Crust, which was two sticks of butter and a touch of shortening. (I used EarthBalance for the latter, because it was handy). Lacking a rolling pin, I rolled the dough (mixed the night before) using a smooth-sided drinking glass. The resulting crust fit every last word of its title. Perfect in every way, except for the one place along the side (near the 10th digit clockwise from the decimal point) where my finger-and-fork-squished seal was incomplete, allowing ooey gooey filling to ooze enthusiastically to the oven floor beneath, causing a bit of smoke. The flue was, of course, open.

The pi dish was exactly that, and so I should report that I deployed about 2*π*6^2  (= 72π) square inches of crust, above and beneath, with approximately 1.5 * π * 4.5^2 (=30.375π) cubic inches of delicious apple filling. The latter number appears to be 7 cups or 100 cubic inches, give or take.

All in all, a very successful first pie ever. I anticipate its complete consumption before Tuesday.

Posted by: anhaga at January 14, 2007 23:10 | link | comments
food

Timberwine

The Mad Vikings present Timberwine!

Maple syrup and pine boughs
(reclaimed from neighbors' Christmas),
cinnamon and cloves,
and a bit of mad science.


Rafe is in town for the week, and we've been busy kitchen-monsters. Tonight has been especially fine.

Posted by: anhaga at January 03, 2007 22:45 | link | comments
friends, vikings, fermentation