Nobody Explain To Me
Some posters, some math, some music, also I am falling apart towards the end of the semester, plus a promise that I'll write more about multiplication facts soon.
HELLO—
SO WINTER BREAK IS VERY SOON
YEAH, MY CLASSES ARE GOING FINE
DEFINITELY THINGS ARE DOING GREAT
NO, THINGS AREN’T FALLING APART
WHY WOULD YOU EVEN THINK THAT
ANYWAY:
Daniel Willingham is very good at writing about psychology and cognitive science so it’s not shocking that he wrote an incredibly clear and balanced take on growth mindset. “In short, increasing children’s growth mindsets may be beneficial, but it’s not a silver bullet solution to motivation, and the challenge of changing mindsets should not be underestimated,” check the whole thing out here.
Math nerdery: Algebra students can (hopefully) make sense of the equation f(x) = x. Basically, the function doesn’t change the input; the input is the output. A cool place where this shows up in math is Brouwer’s Fixed Point Theorem, and Daniel Scher has created a very cool applet that shows how it works.
I owe you all a post on multiplication facts. I’m sorry, see above, at the moment I’m doing a very bad job keeping all the balls in the air. In the meantime, here’s a quote I’m thinking about, from this: “For fraction procedures, the predictors explained about 40% of the variance in performance, with attention, number line estimation, multiplication fact fluency, and long division all making independent contributions.”
I’ve fallen in love with these WPA posters, most of which are sensible, but some of which say “As Old As Creation: Syphilis is Now Curable” and a bunch of dinosaurs are around, please nobody explain to me what is going on here. I would rather just live with this as it is. Another great one: “Pneumonia strikes like a man eating shark led by its pilot fish the common cold.”
Here are the WPA posters spreading the good word about what jobs you can get with math, which quaintly includes “calculating machine operator.” Interesting to compare to contemporary career posters, this one includes physicist as a math career. Fair enough!
I’ve been writing emails for The American Bystander’s substack. The most recent one included a story from my first years of teaching about a kid who stuck his finger somewhere it didn’t belong. I am very fond of the next one which will go out this coming Monday.
READING: I very much enjoyed Alexis Hall’s “Boyfriend Material,” a romance novel that my wonderful wife has been encouraging me to read for I think two years. And at the moment I’m very into Hernan Diaz’s “Trust” which is like the exact opposite of a light funny romance, but it reminds me at times of E.L. Doctorow which is one of the nicest things I can say about a book.
My very good friend and fellow philosophy major shared this hilarious and totally unfair TV spot covering the 1990 meeting of the American Philosophical Association in New Orleans. Maybe it’s fair, I don’t know. “You’ll see an extraordinary number of beards here,” lol.
MUSIC: “Iko Iko” from Dr. John, but mostly Boat Songs from MJ Lenderman. Though a Bulls fan, I still love “Hangover Game” which correctly takes on the ridiculous mythology of the flu game. Lenderman sounds like at times like Neil Young meets Drive By Truckers, which is maybe just to say he sounds like Drive By Truckers. Anyway, it’s very much my thing.
An Op-Ed from a Parent of a Preschool-Aged Kid in RSV/Flu/COVID Season by Bess Kalb. It has been a long few months.
BYE FOR NOW
I APPRECIATE YOU,
Michael