#math1213

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Day 1 Interactive Math

I never feel like the first day of interactive math goes well, and this semester was no exception. About half of the students said they didn’t like math, and I prefer that number to be closer to 100%. If EVERYONE feels like they’re bad at math, then it’s easier to convince people that it’s ok to feel that way. If even one person is good at it, and likes it, then everyone else feels like they’re alone.

We read part of The Pit and the Pendulum and students found details in the story that would inform our experiments. They were focused on some super interesting details that were not what I was expecting. I had to ignore a lot of their ideas because I just didn’t know enough to incorporate them. I think we were all frustrated by that.

We covered the camel messenger PoW, which will be due next Thursday and they were very focused on finding a ‘trick’ which is common. We’ll revisit it next class and hopefully we can find a jumping off point for conversation.

We then did 2 experiments to collect data, and we’ll visualize those data next class. I’m planning to use desmos for that, but I don’t know if there is a good way to visualize frequency with it easily. I will look in to that today and hopefully make an applet to post later.

I’m excited for the rest of the semester. I love teaching this class and I hope everyone gets something positive out of this semester.