I spend too much time reminding my students that the currencies they work with (pounds, euros, dollars etc.) must be written to two decimal places or the nearest whole number (depending on whether the major or minor unit is being used) with the correct unit. It is incredibly common for students to just write a […]
Read moreAuthor: Oxford Maths
Accuracy in mathematical language I was preparing some revised GCSE booster lessons for MyMaths recently on the topic of Quadratic Equations. In some examples I requested that answers be left ‘in surd form’. By this I meant those irrational solutions coming from completing the square or using the quadratic formula. My editor’s response made me stop […]
Read moreWhen I meet people for the first time and they discover that I am a maths teacher/author I usually receive one of two reactions: ‘I hated maths at school and was never any good at it!’ or ‘I loved maths’. It is rare to find anyone in between these two extremes. Of those that hated […]
Read moreOne of the biggest ‘why oh why’ questions in secondary school mathematics is the purpose of studying quadratic equations because ‘I am never going to need them in everyday life’. This irritating question is based on a sound premise. The applications generally offered to students to persuade them of the usefulness of quadratics tend to […]
Read moreVisiting my home town of Leeds recently, my relatives took me to a restaurant in the city centre called The Alchemist. The sign above the door and on their business cards caught my interest. All kinds of maths sprung to my mind. Symmetry. Construction. Pythagoras. Trigonometry. Surds. Proof. The symbol could be presented to students […]
Read moreSteve’s last blog post – Prime factors: Part 1 In my last blog I looked at the number ‘a googol’, which is 10100 and questioned how it would compare to the number of atoms in the universe. Once students have an understanding of standard form including multiplication it is reasonably easy to lead your students through this calculation. It […]
Read moreThe square root sign Nowadays if any definition issue or technicality arises my first response is to trawl the internet, which often leads me down diverse paths. This one took me to square root and cube root signs. Wikipedia suggests the tick sign first appeared in 1525, along with + and -, in a work […]
Read more