212.755.6666
220 East 50th Street
New York, NY 10022
Every year in my Theoretical Physics class, we learn about vibration and waves using the wave equation, which relates the speed of a wave to the product of its wavelength and frequency. We naturally progress into the physics of music, which marries the concepts of ratios and patterns in mathematics, standing waves in strings and air columns, pitch, resonances, and so much more!
American students are plagued with the belief that math is a talent. In one study comparing American students with Japanese students, American kids gave up on a problem after 30 seconds.
"Photomath” is an app. It's free. Its name alone conveys its purpose: take a picture of a math problem and the app will instantly provide you a step-by-step solution to it.
I recently bought a kindle book for $0.99. It was written by a friend’s mother, and I was pretty excited that the Internet can reduce barriers to publishing to the extent that I can buy from a friend on Amazon.com.
Imagine that book was $99,000.00. Would you buy it?
When I was in my early twenties, I spent a summer at a monastery with some remarkable nuns. The beekeeper had been on Wall Street, the woman in charge of milk, butter, and cheese had been a lawyer. I was wildly impressed at the wide range of accomplishments this cheese expert laid in front of me (don’t forget prayers in Gregorian chant seven times a day). And yet, despite all her life experience, she confessed a complete and total paralysis when faced with math.
Procrastination. And not in the way that you think.
Happy π Day! If you are a numbers geek, you might already know when this day is celebrated. If you don’t, it’s on March 14, which has been designated as National Pi Day (made official by Congress on March 12, 2009). Pi Day is celebrated all around the world and has a special place at The Beekman School, as well. I started celebrating it a few years ago, as it was the perfect opportunity to share my love of math, pi, and pie with the students at Beekman.
Science is elegant. Mathematics is beautiful.
That was the insight that came to me as I unexpectedly found myself leafing through a whole slew of Scientific American magazines from years gone by. And with that insight came a whole new appreciation of the subject of mathematics that I had devoted my life to teaching. I was struck by how quickly some of the science articles had become outdated, while the math articles retained a timelessness that reflected the one-pointedness of mathematics itself--the fact that the truths of mathematics belong to eternity.
