Oh! We got our teaching assignments for next semester, and I'm teaching a class myself, rather than TAing! The class is Mathematical Ideas, which is a fun subject, but tends to get students with seriously lacking math backgrounds and/or math anxiety. Which means that, on the way to teaching what I'm supposed to teach, I know I'm going to have to go over basic algebra and geometry, and probably a lot of pre-algebra, too.

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JZ's interview went very well. They did the little dance of "benefits and a tour" which often indicates an impending offer.

Oh, that's great news!

I am reassured. Also, as I decided to go ahead and wear the Medieaval Von Trapp ensemble to school today, I am very reassured that quite a lot of parents and colleagues have come up to me and complimented the dress.

I want a photo of you in this dress. I must see it!

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you know, I thought that exact same thing when I was watching it tonight. Like when Nick was in the dorm room?

I've been thinking it for a long time, but that very scene helped it resurface

Who wouldn't fancy Fay?

er. um. Ya, can't deny it. I fancy her. Sssshhhhh. Don't tell anyone.

OK, the Lex Clark thing. OMG. I've been watching for a few years now, and *never* caught the Gaydar on that one. So? Like? Clark fancies Lex? Hence the always saving him? He must be Bi tho. He has some hot g/f's. BUUTTT he's not one to consummate the relationship (till last week that is) (white fonted since I dunno if that hit the waves across the oceans.

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The new Jones holiday sodas are weirding me out. For Halloween, they had a candy corn flavored soda, which was weird enough. For the winter holidays, they've got a Chanukah pack with latke, applesauce, chocolate coin, and jelly donut flavors. The Christmas pack has Sugar Plum, Christmas Tree, Egg Nog, and Ham.

Ham flavored soda. Latke flavored soda. Christmas tree flavored soda? This is all seriously wrong.

And all of them, includeing the Ham flavor, are kosher. I don't want to know what went into creating those flavors.

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Well, Hil, remember bacon salt is kosher too!

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But it's ham flavored soda! I really don't much care about kashrut at that point -- soda flavored like any meat is just wrong.

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(Particularly if it were Welling/Reeves)

I... I just...

::brain shorts out::

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Argh. Anyone mind if I kvetch about elementary math curriculum for a bit? (I'm going to be tutoring a girl whose school uses Everyday Math, so I figured I ought to learn some more about it.) From a third grade workbook:

Use the "about 3 times" circle rule to complete the table below:

For any circle, the circumference is about 3 times the diameter.

Then they give a table where they give the circumference of a circle, and the kids are supposed to find the diameter.

The "about 3 times" rule? The hell? The circumference is not "about 3 times" the diameter. It's not 3 or so, give or take. It's pi times the diameter. Pi is a really neat number. It's got one hell of a lot of interesting properties. Not the least of which is, it's the ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a circle!

I can see places where a problem like this could be reasonable. Like, introduce pi in some way, let them know that pi is a little more than three, then have them estimate the diameter, given the circumference. Or, my personal favorite (did this with the kids I taught last summer) -- let the kids loose in the school yard with tape measures and paper. Have them find round things (our yard had a whole bunch of lampposts, and the pavement was in circular patterns), measure the circumference and diameter, calculate the ratio, and realize that it's always just about the same. Then talk about pi, and the Greeks, and how it's such a neat number.

But the "about three times" circle rule? That totally obscures the important point, which is that the ratio is exactly the same in any circle.

And then in the same lesson, for some reason, they learn about lines and line segments and rays. They don't actually do anything with them -- really, those aren't terribly useful definitions until you get to geometry, there's not much that you can do with them at that level -- they just learn what they are, and can identify and label and draw them. Why? What on earth is the purpose of learning about something you won't actually use for another seven years?

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Oops. Didn't mean to kill the thread with math rant.

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No. The rant was totally justified. Treating PI as exactly 3 is often offered as a classic example of ignorance and stupidity. There are jokes about legislature making that the legal definition, or engineering firms adapting that as an internal standard. So when someone actually does it in a math textbook, that justifies a rant or three.

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