Math Education for Real

How do you want your kids to learn Math? I don't have a formal education in Math. And if you don't too, these books can help you. At least, you will be able to teach your kids to relax. Just a few minutes for each difficult book!

Work hard, intensely, compulsively, obsessively and of course, productively and insanely?

Work in balance, work having a life and productively too?

You have a choice, your kids too have a choice.

Perfect Rigor: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century

A Strange Wilderness: The Lives of the Great Mathematicians

Henri Poincaré: A Scientific Biography

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character)

How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method (Princeton Science Library)

George Ploya book pdf

Reading Math

When you have to read math textbooks, workbooks etc, remember this useful advice, by Randall S. Hansen and Katherine Hansen in Idiot's Guide to Study Skills, published in 2008. I lifted the following points from page. 130.

1. Read in order. When you find something tough or confusing, the usual culprit is that your have skipped over some points before this one. Go back and study those points in detail, and then come back to the current problem set.
2. Pay attention to illustrations, formulas, proofs, theorems, definitions, etc. These save you a lot of explorations that you will otherwise have to do on your own.
3. Work the sample/example/practice problems.

Success with Mathematics : Mindfulness, Zen and Feelings

Heather Cooke's Success with Mathematics, 2003

page 100-101
Pin down your fleeting and ephemeral thoughts and possibilities.
Stabilize them: "What do I know?" "What do I want?" "I wonder if ...." "Maybe ...?"
Writing them down helps you clarify them,
And it affords you an easier access to them again later.

page 99, 101
Wait before you draw/sketch.
Wait before you have formed an image in your mind.

page 101, 103
Try an example to detect a pattern.
Try something smaller, simpler, more restricted, more special, or partial or auxiliary.

page 106
Vary many aspects to get a sense of the original question.
Vary many aspects to recognize variants in future.
e.g. What aspects can be changed?
What is the range/scope of variation?
In what ways can a given aspect be changed?

When Stuck?

1. Ask "Why stuck?" What do you already know? What do you still want? Can you bridge between the known and the unknown/wanted?


2. Simplify: Break it down. Substitute simpler/easier words or numbers.


3. What else do you think you need? kind of information? from of information?


4. Say it out loud or talk to a toy.


5. Use the given/worked solution a bit.


6. Take a break, do something very different.


7. Skip, later studies may help.


8. After you have solved something that got you stuck for a while, do post-mortem.
   1.What helped to get you going again?
   2.What led you to getting stuck in the first place?

Zen in the Art of SAT

By Matt Bardin and Susan Fine, 2005.
They suggest walking through the open door, swiftly and with confidence. "The open door" is a metaphor for those "pieces of the puzzle that make sense" to you right now. You should try them one at a time, and do only what comes easily to you.