Archive for January 2011
The Rascal Triangle: how magic can happen if you listen to kids
Posted by: Gary Ernest Davis on: January 8, 2011
Three middle school students, widely geographically separated, worked together to produce a novel piece of mathematics of interest. The students, shown above, are (from left to right): Alif Anggoro, a seventh grader at Al Azhar Junior High School in Java Bekasi, Jakarta, Indonesia Eddy Liu, an eighth grader at Washington Middle School, Seattle, Washington, USA […]
What multiplication is … the central role of the distributive property
Posted by: Gary Ernest Davis on: January 7, 2011
Tad Wattanabe raised some interesting points in his comments on the post Multiplication of whole numbers, and how we think about it. Part of what he said is that in Japanese texts, authors distinguish what multiplication IS as distinct from HOW TO multiply. The issue of – psychological – models of whole number multiplication and repeated […]
