trying to be a mile wide AND a mile deep
I include this because it wasn’t in any of the books in which I looked for it when I last taught linear algebra. Exercise: show that if a vector space (over the real numbers) has at least two vectors, it has infinitely many. Simple proof: If V has two vectors, one of them is nonzero. […]
Last week I wrote about talk content. It’s time for round two of talk advice: delivery. These points are largely aimed at technical talks given on projected slides, since that is the overwhelming majority of the talks I’ve attended in the past ten years. First, addressing slides or boardwork: Don’t put too much on a […]
Here are a few handouts I’ve used in the past to teach parts of calculus. Relating latitude and longitude to spherical coordinates. Bonus appendix about great circles. Trigonometry review for calculus students. A guide to curve sketching. Painfully detailed examples of surface integration.
I started compiling advice for conference and colloquium talks some time ago, writing notes to myself while attending talks, prompted by good and bad features of the talks I was listening to, as well as from my own experiences. This installation of advice is aimed at the content of the talk; next week I’ll have […]
If the Pythagorean theorem is mysterious to you, try this activity. I can’t guarantee it will make everything clear, but I hope it will at least help. You need paper, pencil, scissors, and a ruler; probably it wouldn’t hurt to have an L-shaped ruler to get right angles, or you could use graph paper. First, […]
I grade exams problem by problem, with a twist. Basically, I start each exam and grade as far as possible before I have to actually think about point allocation – meaning, essentially, until I hit a problem that will be more than 1 point away from 0 or the maximum, or at least is not […]