A talk by John Mighton

I saw this talk by John Mighton a few months back and ended up showing it to my class. So many things that he said about mathematics and mathematics education resonated with my experiences and I thought it was worth sharing.

The Ubiquitous Bell Curve - a presentation recorded at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo.

Testing and learning

As long as I was posting the note on upcoming classes I thought I would report on some research that I found interesting recently. A report in the Journal of Science by researchers at Purdue University finds that testing helps people learn better than a number of other studying techniques.

New York Times
The Huffington Post
The Telegraph

In another report in the journal of Science, researchers at the University of Chicago found that writing about test anxiety before the test helps students to relieve stress and do better on the test.

University of Chicago press
Toronto Star
Globe and Mail

Summer and Fall courses

Summer courses for the M.A. for Teachers program offered by the mathematics department.

It was only recently that the course Math 5430 6.0 was split into two courses, one on probability and the other on statistics. We will be offering them both this summer with two different instructors.

Math 5440 3.0 : Probability for Teachers
Neal Madras
Monday and Thursday 6-9pm May 2-June 9

Math 5430 3.0 : Statistics for Teachers
Steven Chamberlin
Tuesday and Thursday 6-9pm July 5 - Aug 4

Fall classes:

Math 5020 6.0 : Fundamentals in Mathematics for Teachers
Mike Zabrocki
Mondays 6-9pm

Math 5420 6.0 : Algebra for Teachers
Ada Chan
Thursdays 6-9pm

Education is currently announcing:

Fall 2011:
MATH 5920/EDUC 5215 3.0 : Research in Math Ed. with instructor TBA.