Category: NYMC

  • A brief 4,000 year history of Diophantine Equations

    I filled in for a NY Math Circle class over the weekend. Since the topic was Primitive Pythagorean Triples, I had a blast. I also shared the following outline with the students. Each item is full of wonderful mathematics and anecdotes! Plimpton 322, a Babylonian cuneiform tablet @ Columbia University. From 1900BCE – 1600BCE, and…

  • AP Classes Are a Scam

    I heard about the following Atlantic article from @stevenstrogatz : October 13th, AP Classes Are a Scam which I found quite interesting. I thought much the same in those years when I taught a lot of freshman Calculus. My main observations were that Most students who had taken AP Calculus in High School had to…

  • Remembering Mr. Geller

    I first met Mr. Geller in the mid-80s when I was a high school student. My Stuyvesant math team friends snuck me into the math team practice one morning, and Mr. Geller was the math team coach. Although he enjoyed a reputation for being quite strict, he made an exception in my case and I…

  • Bard Math Circle in the News (bring your kids!)

    Dear Friends, The Bard Math Circle made the front page of today’s Daily Freeman with a story about our math outreach activities at the Kingston Library. COUNTING ON FUN: Math Circle at Kingston Library takes middle school kids beyond boring basics (video) (Monday, January 17, 2011) http://dailyfreeman.com/articles/2011/01/17/news/doc4d33674c5f430298712442.txt  The Bard Math Circle meets twice per month at the Kingston…

  • NY1 News Article about the New York Math Circle

    The New York Math Circle was recently featured on NY1 (“NYC’s 24-hour newschannel on the web”). Check out the video here: Bonus Curriculum Is Greatest Common Factor For Local Math Masters Many thanks to TV reporter Shazia Khan for pursuing this topic! She got in touch with the New York Math Circle (NYMC) and I…

  • New York Math Circle Summer Workshop 2009

    The New York Math Circle had its first summer workshop last week, July 27-30, 2009 at Union College in Schenectady, New York. This workshop for middle school math teachers was organized by Japheth Wood (Bard College) and sponsored by the New York Math Circle. Many thanks to the Math Teachers’ Circle Network for help with…