Math

Reflection: Following My Passions

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When I was in my late teens to early twenties, I knew I liked math but I wanted to try everything that would require application of math: I jumped from applied math to physics to engineering. I loved the process of learning, and I took a lot of different classes, and by the time I was halfway through the second semester of Mechanical Engineering courses, I finally realized that I was only really interested in the math, and talking about the math.

Then today, I went digging through my time-capsules on the internet. I have blogs scattered across a lot of different platforms, and I found this post over on Hubpages that I wrote in 2009. I’m pretty sure this reaffirms that I’ve always wanted to teach math.

Looking back, I’m glad that I took a long, winding path. I needed to grow a lot spiritually and emotionally before I was ready to take on teaching. Hopefully I’ll maintain my capacity for growth in the upcoming years.

Teacher Evaluations & Reflection, Fall 2016

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Teacher Evaluations are out at SFSU. 😀

From my students’ responses, I learned that I can improve in the following ways:

  • Plan what I will write on the board in more detail instead of such a rough sketch,
  • “Don’t let nerves cause mistakes” – definitely happened 2-3 times where I did a problem incorrectly because I tried to wing it on the board…
  • More intensive examples that can tie different concepts together before the midterm (where they do see synthesized word problems),
  • On Universal Design:
    • Group work that involve manipulatives, geared for kinesthetic/tactile learners,
    • Audio / Visual learners balance – I tend to write a conclusion and verbally say a paragraph of explanations.
  • On Long Term Planning:
    • More group work for inverse trig functions and beyond,
    • Maybe building a story that can be used for the concept questions during class?
    • Manage expectations earlier – students will need to work and figure out a lot of stuff on their own,
    • Create systems that can help students organize all the information – give suggestions on how to take notes, maybe?
    • Give more time to do Chapters 4-6, Trigonometry chapters of the book.
  • On Class Policy:
    • Attendance and participation should be recorded more in detail,
    • Be better about grading and returning stuff promptly – I definitely procrastinate on handing back quizzes sometimes. (No one complained about this but I still feel bad about it.)

Looking forward to teaching next semester! I will teach one class of precalculus and TA one section of Calc II. I wonder how different TA’ing for Calculus II will feel. 🙂

Discovery of a Periodic Function while Reading Google Trends

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So I wanted to look up some terms that I will commonly use on this blog over at Google Trends. I feel like I rediscovered the moon cycle…

The data shownabove compares the number of searches  of the terms algebra and geometry over time within the U.S., for the last 90 days, or approximately 3 months. Reading closely, we see that people search the terms “algebra” and “geometry” in a periodic way. Specifically, on the weekends, the amount of searches went down.

Great, now I have figured out that people don’t like to do homework on Saturday/Sunday… Well, we haven’t rigorously tested this theory with sufficient amount real data, since there’s no sample size or even an attempt at any calculation besides looking at a graph.

But, based on context clues I will bet that the null hypothesis would be rejected.

Website Infrastructure

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The notes page is set up, next I aim to finish up organizing the precalculus resources and general non-math resources.

Now, the site contains links all my notes starting from Fall 2015, which send visitors directly to my google drive, but I wonder if that is secure/wise.

Maybe there is a better way to both host the files and allow for instant updates as I compile my LaTeX files. Right now, this blog links to individual files within my google drive which is synced to a directory on my laptop. When I compile on my computer, I work directly in that directory so that the file linked in google drive is automatically synced. I want the same functionality and convenience but I’m not sure if linking to the drive is secure, since it’s a personal account.

Time to do some non-math research~

Update: I hear that wordpress has great support, so I made a post at the forums. I wonder if there’ll be an easy solution?

Why a Blog?

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So, why start a blog when there is approximately… 1.5 \times 10^{6} posts created per day? (Checked @ 8 AM 1/8/17)

For me, this website is a bit more than a collection of math notes and lists of resources. I am aiming to chronicle the challenges of being a student and a teacher at the same time. On the other hand, I want to also document the most fun parts of being in an intensive graduate program!

So this blog will be part survival guide, part chicken-soup-for-the-soul, and part scrapbook.

Oh. By the way, I survived the first semester of graduate school!