• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
Explore Vox Culture Entertainment Life Music News & Politics Technology 
Search All of Vo
 
Alre
Join Vox Take a Tour 
Colin McAllister’s blog
 
5 comments Tags: math, mathematics, science, education, collaboration, maths, algebra, calculus …
Math Accessibility Online - An Open Discussion
The open discussion documentMath Accessibility Online(PDF file on Scribd.com) is aboutsupport for mathematics, and more specifically algebra and calculus, on Web 2.0 andsocial networking sites. If you wish to add your opinion to it or modify it, please email your request to me at: colin dot mcallister@ymail.com (Substitute a period or dot for the "dot"word in my email address). Then, I will give you write access to the original on GoogleDocs. Alternatively, email your mathematical opinion to me, and I will paste it into thedocument along with your name. I have also added a public wiki,http://onlinemathematicsaccess.wikispaces.com/, where you may record your opinionabout Math Accessibility Online. I wish to thank Maria Droujkova for organising the22ndJuly online meeting at Mathfutureon this topic. I prepared this document and wiki,because I am unable to attend her online meeting. 
New Mathematics Problem Solving Group
You are welcome to join the new "Math Problem Solving" group atMathematics24x7.ning.com. Rashmi Kathuria, creator of the Mathematics24x7 socialnetwork, has kindly permitted me to add the discussion group. The social network has 145members including maths teachers and maths enthusiasts. I'm sure that some of them willbe happy to join you in discussing and solving maths problems. Pose your maths problemsthere, or add comments that lead towards a solution or understanding. Embed equations inyour text as images, if they improve the presentation of your discussion. Mathematics24x7has diverse blog posts and topics about teaching mathematics at all stages.Although I am not a mathematician, I have added three problems to get the discussionstarted:
Algebra and Graph Theory
 Combine Resistors to Achieve Minimum Current 
and save the planet! 
 Based on Ohm's Law, Kirchhoff's Rules and 10% tolerance resistors. 
Geometry and Algebra of Irrational Numbers
 
2 hours ago 5 comments4 days ago Post a commentABO
ColinMala
ViewComlectur in thiopinibusinway.S
Links
B
I
M
Li
NMYNEI
Colin McAllister’s Blog
 Profile Neighbors Photos More
 
Post a comment Tags: electronics, math, mathematics, science, geometry, teacher, physics,education …
Largest Semicircle Inscribable in a Unit Square 
or Corn Circles 101.
 From the topic "maxima & minima" on aMathematics forumon Orkut.com 
Algebra and Differential Calculus.
 Problem of Monkey Climbing a Chain 
Can you solve it faster than the monkey? 
 From the Friendster group "ELITE MATH CIRCLE". The Combine Resistors problem is my own design. The other two problems are borrowedfrom maths groups on Friendster.com and Orkut.com, and have hyperlinks to those groupsfor reference.Problems may range from Kindergarten to Postgraduate level and may cover any subjectinvolving mathematics. Discussions on Ning.com social networks support imagesembedded within the text, which is useful for algebra. You may render equations asimages, using an on line equation editor, and upload them into your discussion.
Editing Equations on Web 2.0 Sites
Support for equationediting is a weakness of allWeb 2.0 sites that I haveencountered. Students andlecturers of science andmathematics need to use equations and formulae to develop their work. The blackboard or whiteboard is convenient in the classroom, but academics also need to share their workonline. Social networks and Web 2.0 sites are the ideal forum for sharing, but they are notgeared for academic use. Programmers of FORTRAN, ALGOL and C already have asolution; they have been expressing equations in plain text for half a century. It is commonto see x-squared written as x^2, and the square root of x as x^.5, (x to the power of onehalf), but many people would not be familiar with that shorthand. Some Web 2.0 sitessupport HTML markup when editing posts and comments, and provide format controls like
Bold
and
Italics
on the toolbar. Academic discussions would be considerably improved if Web 2.0 sites would add just three buttons: Superscript, Subscript and Greek letters to theediting toolbar. Some social networks, such as LinkedIn.com and Friendster.com do notsupport any HTML editing. The Hi5.com social network supports HTML in discussions, butyou need to code it by hand, or with HTML editing software such asKompozer , and pasteit into the edit box. Most blogs let you attach an image to your post, so a solution is to usean online equation editor, as atCodeCogsor Thornahawk, to generate an image of your  equation. For example, the expression "\frac{-b\pm{\sqrt[]{(b^2 - 4*a*c)}}}{2a}" renders theformula for solutions to thequadratic equationa*x^2+b*x+c=0. I uploaded the renderedimage "Quadratics_Solutions.gif" to this blog post. One popular Web 2.0 service, theonline collaboration toolZoho Writer has a LaTeX Equation Editor. According to theZoho Blog: "As you may know, a significant % of our users are students. We got a lot of requestsfrom this user segment to build an Equation Editor into Zoho Writer. And Zoho Writer has itnow." The tool that Zoho added isLaTeX, a document markup language developed in the
Quadratic_Solutions 
Jul 7, 2009 3 commentsExplofamilyTAG
born
edu
geom
ma
ma
manor 
nw20
sar 
seas
softwARC
Ju
Ju
M
Ap
M
20
20SUBSpPoweThemGardU
Liv
PHOTOS
 
3 comments Tags: math, mathematics, science, education, web2.0, maths
1980's. If you host a blog or web page, you can use equation rendering plug-ins or cgiprograms such asYourequations.comor MathTexto embed equations into your online content. 
This topic is also being discussed at Mathematics24x7.ning.comand on theMath, Math Education, Math Culturegroup at LinkedIn.com.
 
Post a comment Tags: math, mathematics, science, space, astronomy, education, fractal, maths …
Representing Scale in Mathematics
The conception of scaleand its representation andexploration are criticalmathematical skills.Analogies are commonlyused. A transistor istwothousand times smaller  than a human hair.Antarctic ice isas deep asa dozen football fields.Analogies are not alwayshelpful, and it should not be necessary to repeat them every time that science or technology is discussed. Exponential or Scientific Notationor powers of ten provide aconvenient representation of distance, time, money and other measurements. We usewords like "trillion" in Finance and "nanometer" in Physics, as symbols for powers of ten, tohelp us reason about the very large and the very small. Exponential notation is used on ascientific calculator. Sometimes powers of two are used, as in defining a Kilobyte of memory, or repeatedly folding a sheet of paper in half. An understanding of scale helps usto understand science. For example, travelling to Mars would be much harder thantravelling to theInternational Space Station. Both are in space, butMarsis about one million times further away. Zooming, as used in photography, is a transformation that helpsus to appreciate different scales. It is the dynamic version of the relationship with the realworld that we infer when looking at a model car or the map of a country. Scaling relates tothe concept of similar triangles in geometry. M.C. Escher used one scaling transformation,now known as theDroste Effect, in his mathematical prints. Zooming is an essential tool innavigating computer media and makes graphical content more accessible by letting usadjust the scale to match our visual acuity.The space simulation softwareCelestia provides an "exponential zoom feature that lets you explore space across a huge range of scales". Fractals showself-similarityat many scales, andgraphical presentationslet you zoom in to theoretically limitless depth, as shown on this video,Baroque Mandelbrot Zoomon Youtube. In summary, representations of scale include: exponential notation or powersof ten, maps and models, zooming out to explore simulations of space, or zooming in toexplore the structure of fractals. This post was my response to a discussionMultipleRepresentations, with math teachers onmathematics24x7.ning.com.  
Transistor image is from the linked 1999 BBC article.
 
Smallest_Transistor_1999 
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...