#omgmath

[kathleenthe]

Would you please just DECIDE

According to my weather app, it’s 65F out. Spiffy.  Dress up cozy! Go to school, walking around campus - OMFG so hot, take off a layer. Get into the library, settle in... 10 minutes later realize they still have the airCon on.  Layers back on. Southern #california in #November, ladies & gents - we just don’t know wtf to do with ourselves. (totally wish I’d brought a blankie.)

[thaddeus-maximus]

There is no better feeling than just blowing people's minds with math.

I had been explaining derivatives kinda loosely to this one girl… But during lunch break at our co-op, I decided to give a detailed crash course on limits which ended up as derivatives to ten assorted students. And I ended up learning or solidifying my understanding. But anywho. I just started with limits and how those work (not too detailed- just focusing on how they let you divide by zero). Then I applied that to derivatives. This girl is just looking in awe like “what is he doing”. Just started with how a good approximation of the tangent line’s slope can be given by a secant. Then apply limit to it and you end up with the perfect secant- the tangent. Where the points are on top of each other. She proceeds to just flip the heck out. Can’t even. Just ‘oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh’. Like she had a vision of the being that created GOD. Priceless.

Then I proceed to show how this is useful (optimization, PID control (she does robotics ;) )) and she’s just in awe.

This is why homeschooling rocks- you can just, as a highschooler, teach younger students and solidify your knowledge. Plus its hella cool.

Moral of the story: Teach kids calculus. Math teachers, as soon as you’ve covered functions and graphs, just dip into calculus. If you do it right it is GLORIOUS.

OH AND ON THE TOPIC OF DIVERSITY YOU KNOW WHAT I DID TO MAKE THIS APPEAL TO MINORITIES? N O T H I N G.

[circuittech-blog]

(Works in 2.x and 3.x, using Tkinter to display)

Enjoy!