MathPlus's definitions

Singapore Math Effect

The belief or myth that any country, state, or school that adopts the Singapore math curriculum would have their students' math scores improve significantly.

Mauritius and Rwanda appear to have gained from the Singapore math effect—both countries are economically better off than their bigger resources-rich African neighbors.

by MathPlus July 24, 2016

Looking Busy, Feeling Productive

What most incompetent, ineffective, or unethical workers do every day to remain on the payroll, or to avoid being fired.

Gullible bosses mistake busyness and long hours for productivity or good work ethics, because their staff are always looking busy, feeling productive all the time.

by MathPlus January 13, 2019

Pi Moment

When the public announcement of the proof of a famous unsolved problem on π turned out to be short-lived, because the result was later found to contain grave errors.

Mathematicians worldwide were excited to hear that the number (π + e) has been proved to be transcendental (i.e., its value can’t be the root of an algebraic equation with rational coefficients), but the news was nothing but a pi moment.

by MathPlus March 22, 2021

Coronadoku

Short for “Coronavirus Sudoku.” A sudoku that uses nine corona variants represented by the Greek characters (⍺, β, 𝛾, 𝛿, …) rather than numbers 1–9 to make it look devilishly harder to solve.

MathPlus Publishing is releasing “Coronadoku for Gifted Kids” before the Lunar New Year as a reminder of the initial number of people who died of the coronavirus in Wuhan, before the epidemic became a pandemic.

by MathPlus October 18, 2021

Hypnotic Pi

When autistic folks and idiot savants claim that hours-long meditation on the seemingly random or sacred digits of the number π puts them in some kind of trance, which allows their mind’s eye to see sexy numerical patterns or relationships, or to visualize kaleidoscopic geometric shapes in higher dimensions.

Number theorists obsessed with the properties of π love to indulge themselves in hypnotic pi activities, hoping to experience a few aha! moments, which could help them secure early tenure thanks to some breakthrough results or elegant proofs on pi that grace the pages of reputable math journals.

by MathPlus June 27, 2021

Psalm 1

The book in the Bible that emphasizes the true blessing for God’s children: those who mingle with sinners or mockers of God will not be together with the righteous but instead perish; however, those who meditate day and night on God’s word will be blessed, for they will be like a tree planted by streams of water, which bears fruit in season and whose leaf never withers—whatever they do will be successful.

Psalm 1 lays out the results of the paths chosen by those who want to please God and those who do not respect Him: God takes care of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will lead them to a bad end.

by MathPlus June 18, 2021

Bar Modelist

Someone who is more likely to apply Singapore’s bar model method rather than use algebra to solve a word problem—when a “look-see” proof to an elementary math nonroutine question is conceptually richer or more intuitive than mindlessly juggling some symbols and numbers to find the answer.

With Singapore math being the foreign math curriculum of choice among many homeschoolers, teachers, and tutors, guesstimate the number of bar modelists in the United States in the last two decades.

by MathPlus November 16, 2021