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Math from Three to Seven

thepsmiths.com

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Re: Math from Three to Seven

#201

Post by dfeng »

jarvist wrote: post #92
timthorn wrote: post #83

Axiom Maths is trying to import the concept of maths circles to the UK, providing support and materials for schools to host their own circles. It is run by a team with deep expertise in mathematics education, including the founding head of King's Maths School, a state school that is one of the top performing sixth forms in the country. https://axiommaths.com/how-we-work/

Practically speaking (running a little maths circle in the UK for my children, and some of their friends from nursery and primary school), I have found the Nrich website to be the single best source of resources: https://nrich.maths.org/about-nrich There is also https://parallel.org.uk/ by Simon Singh, but this is aimed at ages ~10+. The book by Rozhkovskaya has some really nice activities in it. https://www.amazon.c…

I would love to hear more about your experiences running a maths circle here in the UK. My two daughters are a little young (3.5 and 0.5), but this article has inspired me to get the ball rolling.

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#202

Post by 082349872349872 »

gradschoolfail wrote: post #195
082349872349872 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 billion people in this world, yet Jane Psmith and John Psmith have oddly familiar voices: the μορφή of their writing brings to mind some ὕλη of yesteryear...

https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-the-spirit-of-the-mounta... ὕλημπίλιες?

ὕλημπίλιες: https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-sea-people-by-christina-...

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#203

Post by jarvist »

dfeng wrote: post #201
jarvist wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practically speaking (running a little maths circle in the UK for my children, and some of their friends from nursery and primary school), I have found the Nrich website to be the single best source of resources: https://nrich.maths.org/about-nrich There is also https://parallel.org.uk/ by Simon Singh, but this is aimed at ages ~10+. The book by Rozhkovskaya has some really nice activities in it. https://www.amazon.c…

I would love to hear more about your experiences running a maths circle here in the UK. My two daughters are a little young (3.5 and 0.5), but this article has inspired me to get the ball rolling.

It's been really rewarding. I definitely recommend jumping in. I started with my reception-age child (+ school friends), and have just extended it to their younger sibling (+ friends from nursery). Your 3.5 year old will have started the EYFS (Early Years Foundational Stage) syllabus at nursery if they attend (which is also what they do in the 'Reception' year at primary school, before starting the national curriculum in the first year), so they will now be exposed to counting and comparisons. The perfect time to get started, in other words!

The NRICH material is really good: https://nrich.maths.org/teachers/early-years

There's some NRICH funded research that showed that exposure to symmetry and reasoning at this level was much more predictive of future abilities than numbers and counting. I think when parents try and help at the early stages, they often try to e.g. get their kids to count to 100, which is conceptually identical to counting to 10.

For number fluency there is the free White Rose '1 minute maths' app, which does a very nice job of gamifying subitising & etc. A lot of primary schools in London seem to have adopted the White Rose teaching resources. https://whiteroseeducation.com/1-minute-maths

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#204

Post by wizzwizz4 »

eru wrote: post #198
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I communicated that badly. It doesn't matter so much how things are seen outside the workplace, but within it. Programming is definitely considered high-status in a software firm: ever heard of the concept of a "rockstar programmer"? Low-status tasks (e.g. vital, but "unpromotable" ones) are delegated to women, and tasks that are associated with femininity are considered low-status. This is a well-documented ( https:…

For a counterpoint: a friend of mine works at Google, and as an excellent SRE who also happens to be female she's steadily getting opportunities thrown her way; especially invites to speak at external conferences and other internal events. She's also gotten promotions. It helps that she's very competent, but she didn't have to work extra to be noticed by the organisation.

Systematic discrimination isn't the same as universal discrimination.

If we're trading second-hand anecdotes, I've got a couple dozen of trans women programmers no longer receiving promotions despite flawless performance reviews, and half a dozen trans men programmers suddenly receiving credit for work they were previously ignored for. That's as close to a controlled test as I can think of – though, obviously, marred by the selection bias of anecdotes.

All this doesn't mean it's the same in mathematics – but I'm not sure how someone can deny that there's institutional sexism in the field of computer programming. It's well-documented. "One person at Google" doesn't refute that.

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#205

Post by drivebyhooting »

dxbydt wrote: post #191
drivebyhooting wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately there are not enough. For example UCLA math circle is very exclusive and there’s effectively no admission in elementary school if you miss enrollment or don’t do well on their kindergarten test. Is there any alternative?

> Unfortunately there are not enough. Totally agree with you. That was the case in my area in the midwest as well. That's why I started my own mathcircle. Its not as hard as you might think - you just need a few interested students, a few textbooks, and plenty of time. We focus entirely on competition math - so mathcounts, amc 8/10/12, aime/jmo/imo. The material gets real hard real fast, so kids will drop, new kids w…

Which textbooks do you recommend for 6 year olds? I have a few Russian math circle ones and the UCLA one. But it’s kind of daunting because the material is not sequenced into lesson plans.

As a point of reference, reading curriculum is very easy to teach because there are scripts to follow in the lesson plans.

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#206

Post by dxbydt »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #205
dxbydt wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately there are not enough. Totally agree with you. That was the case in my area in the midwest as well. That's why I started my own mathcircle. Its not as hard as you might think - you just need a few interested students, a few textbooks, and plenty of time. We focus entirely on competition math - so mathcounts, amc 8/10/12, aime/jmo/imo. The material gets real hard real fast, so kids will drop, new kids w…

Which textbooks do you recommend for 6 year olds? I have a few Russian math circle ones and the UCLA one. But it’s kind of daunting because the material is not sequenced into lesson plans. As a point of reference, reading curriculum is very easy to teach because there are scripts to follow in the lesson plans.

https://moems.org/product-category/olympiad-books/

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#207

Post by masto »

hyperbrainer wrote: post #184
masto wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you already know or could try to find other peers who like math, and see if you can get something started? I think there's a good chance that if you approached a supportive teacher with "my four friends and I want to start a math club, can you help us?", it would get the ball rolling. Perhaps you could put something up on the bulletin board or equivalent you kids have these days, data kiosks or hovergrams or wh…

Oh boy did I try and try. Unfortunately, my school suffers from two problems: it is very small - so less potential candidates for both teachers and students, and it has a culture of anti-intellectualism; for some reason, everybody hates maths, thinks it is hard and so on. I mean I tried to do an engineering/robotics thing. Even that was unsuccessful. People were _afraid_? of doing things.

Sorry to hear that. My school experience was a long while ago now, but very similar to what you described.

I feel like I'm supposed to impart some wisdom, so I guess I'd add.. once I got out of high school, none of it mattered. Don't let it get you down.

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#208

Post by gradschoolfail »

082349872349872 wrote: post #202
gradschoolfail wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-the-spirit-of-the-mounta... ὕλημπίλιες?

ὕλημπίλιες: https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-sea-people-by-christina-...

I guessed when psmiths mentioned Arcadia, they were thinking of the Illyrians.. for the Greeks before PII were a thalassocracy/machy

[can we compare sarissa to Swiss pike]

And then there were the Habsburgs..

In your locality, are there no (nonplains-derived, eg not Monts+Caps of Ephesus) fairy tales of dynastic feuds? Valleys have always been fertile, livestock abundant ( so that driving term high enough to avert fratricide/eternal war with the eastern barbarians)? Northern thais didnt discover grazing/lactose until 1970s, and then ofc appalachia/scottish notterriblelands

[https://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Badlands#Etymology]

   Q: what shape are the castles in Castalia, if Castalia itself is in the form of a tower — ofc i will relate to the general structure of polynesia :)
Lowland cogniappe

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41725625

Slavic muxa lowland austrian/schwabian mugge (??) maggot

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#209

Post by aebtebeten »

gradschoolfail wrote: post #208
082349872349872 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ὕλημπίλιες: https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-sea-people-by-christina-...

I guessed when psmiths mentioned Arcadia, they were thinking of the Illyrians.. for the Greeks before PII were a thalassocracy/machy [can we compare sarissa to Swiss pike] And then there were the Habsburgs.. In your locality, are there no (nonplains-derived, eg not Monts+Caps of Ephesus) fairy tales of dynastic feuds? Valleys have always been fertile, livestock abundant ( so that driving term high enough to avert fra…

At first there were the Habsburgs — "and then there were none".

livestock raiding + pikes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_raiding#/media/File:Sch...

(local on local domestic* feuds are well attested, both in legend and in architecture, but very little gets built these days with defensibility as a prime consideration)

I'll have to reread, but (having just arisen this morning) even caucasians were known for their feuds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vainakh_tower_architecture

As a prediction before checking the etymology, I'll bet Муха/Mücke goes back all the way to PIE: one of the benefits of sitting around the campfire (attested!) for getting high (attested!) and gossiping about body counts (attested!) is that it tends to discourage insects (is this attested?)

RCH as a measurement unit seems to have been derived from a more humanistic tradition, however.

* international mixups ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eePHXDl0Pjc ) mostly ended when the poverty did, although I note that just this summer I saw a job posting for international development work that required either small arms certification or the equivalent army service. A colleague in KFOR tried to convince me, around the turn of the century, that vacationing where he'd served was great; I was almost ready to believe him until he started listing the "simple" rules for avoiding likely minefields.

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#210

Post by gradschoolfail »

aebtebeten wrote: post #209
gradschoolfail wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guessed when psmiths mentioned Arcadia, they were thinking of the Illyrians.. for the Greeks before PII were a thalassocracy/machy [can we compare sarissa to Swiss pike] And then there were the Habsburgs.. In your locality, are there no (nonplains-derived, eg not Monts+Caps of Ephesus) fairy tales of dynastic feuds? Valleys have always been fertile, livestock abundant ( so that driving term high enough to avert fra…

At first there were the Habsburgs — "and then there were none". livestock raiding + pikes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_raiding#/media/File:Sch... (local on local domestic* feuds are well attested, both in legend and in architecture, but very little gets built these days with defensibility as a prime consideration) I'll have to reread, but (having just arisen this morning) even caucasians were known for their…

It does, but imho the interesting part is the usage divergence , mosquito (midge?) vs fly (dialectal vs std german)

Thx for the raiding article, all the forexes in one place :)

And dont forget the (old) florentine skyscrapers, derived from germanic feuds? (G+G)

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