Arithmophobia is common in our society. Many adults have been traumatized by their mathematics education, and they accidentally pass those feelings to their children. In reality, math is a set of rules applied systematically. Once those rules are understood, even algebra and calculus aren’t scary. Since people expect math to be hard, it is. Indeed, learning … Continue reading Managing a Mathitude
Many students hate trigonometry, and for understandable reasons. It is hard for students to figure out what triangles, sines, and cosines have to do with anything else. So we shouldn’t be too surprised when they push back a little bit on learning it. While some trigonometry has real-life usage, the most significant benefit to trig … Continue reading What We Learn When We Learn Trigonometry
Many students (and parents) cower in fear when thinking about logarithms. However, while there are additional rules for dealing with these mathematical entities, there is nothing fundamentally different about exponentials and logarithms than there is about squaring and square roots. The problem is that most books don’t teach them well. Let’s start by looking at … Continue reading Teaching Logarithms
