This weekend should be a very interesting and accessible lecture by Dr. Harold Reiter:

Exploding Dots is an alternative method for examining place value. We’ll look at some exotic methods of representing numbers and see a few applications. Some methods make use of antidots and some require black holes.

Dr. Reiter is a professor at the University of North Carolina.  Following are some of his many accomplishments:

• Member of the College Board’s College-Level Examination Program (CLEP) Pre Calculus Mathematics Committee
• Chair of the MAA’s Edith May Sliffe Award Committee.
• Former chair of the MATHCOUNTS Question Writing Committee
• Former member of AIME and USAMO committees
• Former chair of SAT II Test Development Committee with ETS. advanced mathematics

Richard Rusczyk linked to a great article based on some recent research suggesting that students benefit from struggling with Hard Problems.

“We’ve found there is a healthy amount of frustration that’s productive; there is a satisfaction after having struggled with it,” says Roberta Schorr, associate professor in Rutgers University at Newark’s Urban Education Department. Her group has also found that, though conventional wisdom says certain abilities are innate, a lot of kids’ talents and capabilities go unnoticed unless they are effectively challenged; the key is to do it in a nurturing environment.

“Most of the literature describes student engagement and motivation as having to do with their attitudes about math — whether they like it or not,” Schorr says. “That’s different from the engagement we’ve found. When students are working on conceptually complex problems in a supportive environment, they do better. They report feeling frustrated, but also satisfaction, pride and a willingness to work harder next time.”

“Motivation is a key aspect of achievement that we often ignore in math; it’s the missing link,” Schorr says. “We need to provide kids with conceptually challenging math problems in an emotionally safe environment, and the teacher plays a critical role in that. Kids can view frustration as an opportunity for success instead of an indication of failure, but that won’t happen without teachers letting the students experience productive struggles.”

This Saturday Dr. Dorin Andrica will continue exploring the Triangle Inequality.  For students who may have missed last week’s session he will begin with a brief review.

A good friend of the Metroplex Math Circle, Dr. Arthur Benjamin, is a popular speaker at the world famous TED conference.  Recently, he offered his own idea for fundamentally changing math education in our country.  Like Richard Rusczyk, he sees the singular focus on Calculus as insufficient and distracting from a full math education.

This Saturday we are very pleased to have as our returning speaker, Dr. Dorin Andrica.   He will share with us many applications of the Triangle Inequality which students will find useful on upcoming math contests.

Dorin Andrica received his Ph.D. in 1992 from “Babes-Bolyai” University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania; his thesis treated critical points and applications to the geometry of differentiable submanifolds. Professor Andrica has been chairman of the Department of Geometry at “Babes-Bolyai” since 1995. He has written and contributed to numerous mathematics textbooks, problem books, articles and scientific papers at various levels. He is an invited lecturer at university conferences around the world: Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia, Turkey, and the USA. Dorin is a member of the Romanian Committee for the Mathematics Olympiad and is a member on the editorial boards of several international journals. Also, he is well known for his conjecture about consecutive primes called “Andrica’s Conjecture.” He has been a regular faculty member at the Canada–USA Mathcamps between 2001–2005 and at the AwesomeMath Summer Program (AMSP) since 2006. Related articles on this site.

Please note that this meeting will be held in ECSS 2.311.