Measure Theory Interblog

Work on your grammar AND your math

Jeff — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 16:35:34 +0000

Fig Newton

Jeff — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 18:39:31 +0000

Found this on Reddit

Online Tutoring Messages #1

Jeff — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 18:32:11 +0000

I revamped my online tutoring website a few weeks ago. Among the changes I made was a form where people could send me a message directly from the site. I thought that since it saved people from copying my email address and logging into their email, I might get a few more emails. So far, I’ve received 12 messages in the past 24 days - which is about 11 more messages than I usually get in any 24 day period. But, even as the quantity of messages increases, the quality hasn’t. And I haven’t ended up with any more business than I would normally have had.

Here’s a recent exchange I had:

WILL U HELP ME WITH MY MATH PLEASE

—

I’d be happy to help you out. What sort of troubles are you having?

Jeff

—

Now, I studied math and economics, not english. But, I’m reasonably certain that there’s no conceivable way that “What sort of troubles are you having?” could possibly be answered with “ok”.

(Shortly I’ll post some more of the crazier email exchanges I’ve had)

6’s, 7’s and 8’s

Jeff — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:54:49 +0000

The 6, 7, 8 phenomenon. I thought I was the only one who experienced this!

(Not to be confused with the 7, 8, 9 phenomenon)

Schrodinger’s Cat

Jeff — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 13:17:31 +0000

It’s more physics-related than math-related, but I found it funny

Captcha

Jeff — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 01:04:01 +0000

A different kind of captcha:

(from Reddit)

x + 7x = 8x

Jeff — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 15:26:14 +0000

I do online tutoring. This was one of the questions that someone sent me:

1) Solve this equation: -10x-6+4x=-4x+8

2) x + 7x = 8x

Number 1 seems ok. Number 2 perplexes me.

Mathsex

Jeff — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 15:22:14 +0000

I just stumbled onto a math community on Live Journal. Considering the frequency that I Google “math AND sex”, it’s amazing that I didn’t turn this up before now.

Mathsex Community

(There appears not to be as much sex as there is math. Some kind of false advertising or something)

What does the dx mean?

Jeff — Thu, 31 May 2007 18:37:01 +0000

I just finished tutoring a student. We were finishing up differentiation and starting up antidifferentiation. I told her not to worry too much about what the “squiggle” and the dx meant and instead to think of them as enclosing the part that you’re meant to integrate. So far, so good. Until we got to a question that had dv instead of dx. The class is introductory and doesn’t have any double or triple integrals and it doesn’t have any kind of integration of multivariable functions. So, it wasn’t a big deal. But, she asked why it was dv now.

“Well, I lied…it sort of indicates what variable you’re supposed to integrate”

“…ok…”

“….so, if it said xv dx, then you’d know you were integrating over x and you’d pretend the v wasn’t changing”

“…”

“I probably made things a lot worse. Ignore what I just said”

“That’s ok. I wasn’t really listening”

Does that make sense?

Jeff — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:12:11 +0000

I hate when I explain something and people nod as though they get it when they really don’t. So, after tutoring for a year, I’d always ask if it made sense what I just went through and if they’re hesitant, I offer to go through it again slower. At lot of the time the trouble stems from the fact that I have nearly illegible handwriting and they can’t make out half of what I wrote (”is that an s or a 5″). I’m good at reading faces for 80% of the people. The other 20% I have no clue. One time, I was meeting a student for the first time. We were talking about how the class was and they casually mentioned how the prof was always asking if what he’d just said made sense and he found it very annoying. By that time it was a reflex for me to ask if a question made sense after finishing it. I caught myself a few times, but not many. I don’t remember if it seemed to bother him much, but it made me a lot more conscious of how much I ask that.