Questions tagged [teaching]
For questions related to teaching mathematics. For questions in Mathematics Education as a scientific discipline there is also the tag mathematics-education. Note you may also ask your question on http://matheducators.stackexchange.com/.
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Not especially famous, long-open problems which anyone can understand
Question: I'm asking for a big list of not especially famous, long open problems that anyone can understand. Community wiki, so one problem per answer, please.
Motivation: I plan to use this list in ...
263
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Mathematical games interesting to both you and a 5+-year-old child
Background: My daughter is 6 years old now, once I wanted to think on some math (about some Young diagrams), but she wanted to play with me...
How to make both of us to do what they want ? I guess ...
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Short papers for undergraduate course on reading scholarly math
(I know this is perhaps only tangentially related to mathematics research, but I'm hoping it is worthy of consideration as a community wiki question.)
Today, I was reminded of the existence of this ...
154
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Where to buy premium white chalk in the U.S., like they have at RIMS? [closed]
While not a research-level math question, I'm sure this is a question of interest to many research-level mathematicians, whose expertise I seek.
At RIMS (in Kyoto) in 2005, they had the best white ...
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What are the most misleading alternate definitions in taught mathematics?
I suppose this question can be interpreted in two ways. It is often the case that two or more equivalent (but not necessarily semantically equivalent) definitions of the same idea/object are used in ...
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Demystifying complex numbers
At the end of this month I start teaching complex analysis to
2nd year undergraduates, mostly from engineering but some from
science and maths. The main applications for them in future
studies are ...
51
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22
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Why linear algebra is fun!(or ?)
Edit: the original poster is Menny, but the question is CW; the first-person pronoun refers to Menny, not to the most recent editor.
I'm doing an introductory talk on linear algebra with the ...
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Can the unsolvability of quintics be seen in the geometry of the icosahedron?
Q1. Is it possible to somehow "see" the unsolvability of quintic polynomials
in the $A_5$ symmetries of the icosahedron (or dodecahedron)?
Perhaps this is too vague a question.
Q2. Are there ...
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About the classification of commutative and of cocommutative, fin. dim. Hopf algebras
I want to prove that the cocommutative finite dimensional Hopf algebras over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero are group algebras (for some finite group) and that the commutative f....
- 7,698
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"Mathematics talk" for five year olds
I am trying to prepare a "mathematics talk" for five year olds from my daughter's elementary school. I have given many mathematics talks in my life but this one feels
very tough to prepare. Could the ...
108
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Why should one still teach Riemann integration?
In the introduction to chapter VIII of Dieudonné's Foundations of Modern Analysis (Volume 1 of his 13-volume Treatise on Analysis), he makes the following argument:
Finally, the reader will ...
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History of $\frac d{dt}\tan^{-1}(t)=\frac 1{1+t^2}$
Let $\theta = \tan^{-1}(t)$. Nowadays it is taught:
1º that
$$
\frac{d\theta}{dt} = \frac 1{dt\,/\,d\theta} = \frac 1{1+t^2},
\tag1
$$
2º that, via the fundamental theorem of calculus, this is ...
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Teaching homology via everyday examples
What stories, puzzles, games, paradoxes, toys, etc from everyday life are better understood after learning homology theory?
To be more precise, I am teaching a short course on homology, from ...
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An example of a beautiful proof that would be accessible at the high school level?
The background of my question comes from an observation that what we teach in schools does not always reflect what we practice. Beauty is part of what drives mathematicians, but we rarely talk about ...
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Applications of knot theory
An answer of André Henriques' inspired the following closely related CW question. Parts of the following is extracted from his answer and my comments.
I regularly teach a knot theory class. ...