I have an interactive art piece I sometimes bring with me when I go to festivals called “Math Anxiety Camp.” The project consists of a little math book I wrote, more of a pamphlet, full of funny, weird, and famous math problems that are designed to elicit both laughter and anxiety. Problem number 1 is “Name a number that is 3.” Problem 18 asks you to count backwards from 100 by 7s and state the last positive number you count. This problem is known as “serial sevens,” and even has its own Wikipedia page because it is used by psychologists to elicit anxiety in experimental subjects. When I give problems, I try to rush my subjects, and I make buzzing noises when they get wrong answers. I say things math teacher should never say like “You should have learned this last year.”
Good art elicits emoitions, and I know of no other art piece that is designed to elicit the emotion of math anxiety. As a math teacher, math anxiety is an emotion I deal with regularly. Manifesting it at a festival where this emotion is out of context and the stakes are low gives me a novel way to interact with people around their math anxiety, and I’ve learned a lot from adults about their experiences learning mathematics as children.
Anyone who achieves anxiety from my art project wins an a achievement award, namely a yellow sticker. Interestingly, I’m not able to make everyone anxious with my little book of math problems because a lot of people enjoy math. I still give them a sticker if they want one.
It is both a prime and a palindrome and is named after one of the Seven Princes of Hell (you can see why) who was tasked with helping people make ingenious discoveries and inventions.
More #Strandbeests from conceptual artist-engineer Theo Jansen. He became obsessed with designing moveable sculptures that might help conserve beach dunes, then says the project got completely out of hand from there. And it's wonderful.
From https://www.strandbeest.com/ Strandbeests are "Skeletons made from yellow plastic tube (Dutch electricity pipe), are able to walk and get their energy from the wind."
Okay, it's time. Time to change servers. Time to have local & federated timelines that don't make my eyes bleed. Time to support an indie effort.
Does anyone want to share about their server? My main interests are #Music - I play #Eurorack#Synth, #Guitar, #ChapmanStick, and software, with varying degrees of skill - and #Mathematics - I'm attempting to get into grad school for #Math to facilitate a career change. I'm also liberal af, if that matters one way or the other on your server.
Gefällt euch eine der drei folgenden Ideen für #Fantasy Geschichten
Wenn ja, welche?
Anna arbeitet für die Planungsabteilung der Berliner E-Werke. Bei einer Revision stellt sie fest, dass jedes Jahr etliche MWh Strom unabgerechnet im Stadtbezirk Mitte verbraucht werden.
Als sie beschließt, der Sache auf den Grund zu gehen, stößt sie auf einen zunächst verlassenen scheinenden U-Bahn-Schacht. Als sie jedoch Stimmen hört, versteckt sie sich. Sie fängt einzelne Gesprächsfetzen auf, …
"Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true." – Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) #quote#mathematics#maths#math
My #math Mastodon peeps. These days school doesn't emphasize teaching logic and proofs, like they did when I took plane geometry which was really about proof and not really about triangles and such.
Does anyone have suggestions for modern resources I could assign my kids to do beginning proofs? One kid is studying calculus in 7th grade the other is in more normal speed, studying basic algebra. I'd just like to give them maybe a problem a week to prove something but in a thoughtful way.
Just started writing up a few of my notes on introductory Category Theory. Not much here yet (it took me awhile to get Figure 1 to look right, and it's still not perfect).