MathPlus's definitions

Math Currency

When sharing useful, light-hearted, or creative math stuff to fellow math educators around the globe gives them an opportunity to know you and to recommend you to interested parties that might need someone with your expertise to meet their mathematical needs or wants.

In addition to performance currency (when you deliver upon a product above people’s expectations) and relationship currency (when you take the time to connect, engage, and get to know people in your milieu), you need math currency to make yourself an odd in a sea of evens.

by MathPlus October 28, 2021

Meta

Facebook’s new corporate name with a blue infinity logo that appears to be a cosmetic attempt to divert attention away from negative stories plaguing the now-toxic brand, which has put “profits over people and safety”—the parent company that also owns Instagram and WhatsApp wants to go beyond social media into areas like virtual reality (VR).

Meta is to Facebook what Alphabet is to Google.

by MathPlus October 28, 2021

No Calculators Allowed

When students’ reliance on a scientific or graphing calculator prevents them from being fluent in performing certain basic operations, such as factorizing a function, finding the zeros of a cubic polynomial, and standardizing a normal distribution from the Statistical Tables—ritually pressing a set of keys often conceals their poor understanding or mastery of these routines.

If only math teachers and tutors would implement the “No Calculators Allowed” rule, students would be manually forced to learn the routine or tedious steps in getting the answer to some intermediate step of a problem.

by MathPlus October 31, 2021

The Art of Masking

When properly handling or wearing a face mask is far from obvious, because a disturbing number of mask wearers are quasi-clueless how to properly protect themselves against the coronaviruses and their variants.

Like common sense that isn’t common after all, the general population needs to be continually exposed to the art of masking through health awareness campaigns to avoid preventable corona infections or deaths.

by MathPlus November 1, 2021

Blended Modeling

When you are at home with both Singapore’s bar model method and stack model method that you know which problem-solving visualization strategy is more suitable to solve certain types of word problems.

It’s an open secret that most Singapore math educators or coaches are ill-equipped to handle blended modeling—most are familiar with bar modeling, but few are fluent with the more intuitive stack modeling, in tackling brain-unfriendly math questions.

by MathPlus November 1, 2021

The Sanitization of Singapore Math

When fertile or fitting real-life or contextual questions and math tidbits or humor in a math textbook, submitted to Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE) for approval, are often rejected for politically incorrect reasons, or because the items could potentially be perceived to be linked to politics, race, religion, or sex.

Items like “Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not divide by zero!” and phrases like “beautiful curves,” “immoral algebra,” and “juicy little theorem” are banned without being given valid reasons—aren’t these rejections part of the sanitization of Singapore math to only publish sterilized or sterile contents to satisfy the mathematical wants of a humorously or prudishly challenged audience or readership?

by MathPlus September 5, 2021

Xi Math

When math curriculums in China are expected to subtly incorporate some of Emperor Xi’s thought as well as to praise the mixed achievements of past and present mainland Chinese mathematicians and their IMO mathletes-medalists as part of the country’s rich mathematical heritage—when political ideology and mathematical glory could serve as a catalyst to raising the quantitative literacy or numeracy of a billion-odd people.

Brainwashing hundreds of millions of schoolchildren, including targeting those in the Chinese diaspora, with Xi math could usher in a new era in math education worldwide, which could challenge the elitist or supremacist position of Western math in coming decades—when exporting China math worldwide under the guise of raising global numeracy could be a modern form of intellectual colonialism.

by MathPlus September 5, 2021