Recently added articles from Australian Mathematics Teacher:
Editorial.
Sep 22, 2008; ... I come from a long-line of low-tech folk: my grandfather, a master bricklayer, had to construct with straight edge and compass, and then build all the frameworks for the arches he built around Sydney; my father, a navigator in the navy, used a parallel ruler and set square (oh, and log ...
Letter to the editors.
Sep 22, 2008; ... Given that our subject grew out of the need people felt to answer questions such as, "How many ... ?", "How much ... ?" and "How far ... ?", it is a measure of how it has been perverted when it is necessary for us to have a serious discussion on how to make it relevant--for example, as in ...
[pi]Re-count and recall.
Sep 22, 2008; ... The number [pi] This year we have been investigating the number [pi] [approximately equal to] 3.14159, defined to be the ratio C/d of the circumference C to the diameter d of any given circle. Here we look at another of those surprising and unexpected places where ...
The ubiquitous parabola.(CACTUS)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Every so often someone who once suffered a poor learning experience, challenges the inclusion of key topics in the curriculum. When an author and a British politician both questioned the teaching of quadratic equations the AAMT email list members responded admirably. The list provides a ...
Proportion in middle-school mathematics: it's everywhere.
Sep 22, 2008; ... Proportional thinking is the mathematical basis of a wide range of topics in the middle-school mathematics curriculum. While the concept is obvious in the traditionally-named ratio and proportion sections, proportional thinking is also the key to such diverse topics as rate, gradient of a ...
Conjecture activities for comprehending statistics terms through speculations on the functions of imaginary spectrometers.(Report)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Introduction The purpose of this study was to describe students' problem solving performance when they make conjectures to comprehend three statistics terms. Teachers are key figures in changing the ways in which mathematics is taught and learned in schools. Mathematics teachers ...
What is mathematics?(From Helen Prochazka's Scrapbook)
Sep 22, 2008; ... The Mathematics Subject Classification (MSC) was developed by the American Mathematical Society and Zentralblatt fur Mathematik in Germany. It is used to categorise items covered by the two reviewing databases, Mathematical Reviews (MR) and Zentralblatt Math (Zbl). The MSC is broken down ...
A lot of ones.(DISCOVERY)(number one)
Sep 22, 2008; ... The symbol 1 for "one" seems to have been used in many languages for more than 5000 years. The ancient Egyptians cut it into stone and painted it on some of their pottery. Other ancient civilisations also used this numeral, which is thought to have been derived from the lifted finger, a ...
Book mathematics.(Diversions)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Probability would seem to be an obvious mathematical topic to arise in otherwise ordinary books. However, usually the narrative interest of whether or not a character in a novel wins a bet, for example, gives little attention to the actual probabilities: the hoped for event either happens ...
Eye colour and reaction time: an opportunity for critical statistical reasoning.(Report)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Eye colour is a variable that is often used in classroom data collection activities. It is relatively easy to document, subject to the occasional argument, and provides an example of a categorical variable other than gender to be used for graphing purposes. Figure 1 shows a pie graph ...
Maths and the atom bomb.(From Helen Prochazka's Scrapbook)(Brief article)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Stanislaw Ulam (1909-1984) was a Polish mathematician who participated in the Manhattan Project and proposed the Teller-Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons. David Bergamini wrote in "Life Science Library of Mathematics" (1963) <Pre>From the inception of the atomic ...