In this series, I’m compiling some of the quips and one-liners that I’ll use with my students to hopefully make my lessons more memorable for them.

One of my pet peeves is students who don’t give me a reasonable amount of time to grade their final exams and compute their grade for the semester. Usually, “reasonable” means “tomorrow morning.” (However, sometimes I have to give multiple final exams on the same day, and there just isn’t enough time in the day to compute grades for all of my classes in that amount of time.)

So, to head this off, I’ll announce to my students when they can expect me to finish grading the finals so that it’s safe to ask for their grade for the semester; usually the answer is “9:00 tomorrow morning.” And, to make sure that no one bugs me before then, I’ll give the following playful admonition:

Anyone who asks me for their grade before 9:00 tomorrow morning gets an automatic F in the course.

Behold, a three-dimensional calendar on the faces of a rhombic dodecahedron:

Source: https://www.wired.com/2016/10/gorgeous-12-sided-wooden-calendar-geometry-nerd-life/

Kudos to Arizona State University for making this public service announcement.

Even though I’ve had nothing but good professional relationships with the athletic department at my own university, I still think this is really funny.

Source: http://imgur.com/vJWkqhe

I really enjoyed this article concerning the mathematics of shuffling a deck of playing cards, justifying the claim that no two properly shuffled decks of cards have ever been the same: http://www.matthewweathers.com/year2006/shuffling_cards.htm

I’m taking a one-day break from my usual posts on mathematics and mathematics education to note a symbolic milestone: meangreenmath.com has had more than 100,000 total page views since its inception in June 2013. Many thanks to the followers of this blog, and I hope that you’ll continue to find this blog to be a useful resource to you.

Twenty most viewed posts or series (written by me):

1. All I want to be is a high school teacher. Why do I have to take Real Analysis?
2. Analog clocks
3. Another poorly written word problem
4. Arithmetic and geometric series
5. Common Core, subtraction, and the open number line
6. Exponential growth and decay
7. Finger trick for multiplying by 9
8. Full lesson plan: magic squares
9. Full lesson plan: Platonic solids
10. Fun with dimensional analysis
11. Importance of the base case in a proof by induction
12. Infraction
13. Inverse Functions
14. My “history” of solving cubic, quartic and quintic equations
15. My Mathematical Magic Show
16. Square roots and logarithms without a calculator
17. Student misconceptions about PEMDAS
18. Taylor series without calculus
19. Was there a Pi Day on 3/14/1592?
20. What Happens if the Explanatory and Response Variables Are Sorted Independently?

Twenty most viewed posts (guest presenters):

1. Engaging students: Classifying polygons
2. Engaging students: Congruence
3. Engaging students: Deriving the distance formula
4. Engaging students: Distinguishing between axioms, postulates, theorems, and corollaries
5. Engaging students: Distinguishing between inductive and deductive reasoning
6. Engaging students: Factoring quadratic polynomials
7. Engaging students: Finding x- and y-intercepts
8. Engaging students: Laws of Exponents
9. Engaging students: Multiplying binomials
10. Engaging students: Order of operations
11. Engaging students: Pascal’s triangle
12. Engaging students: Right-triangle trigonometry
13. Engaging students: Solving linear systems of equations by either substitution or graphing
14. Engaging students: Solving linear systems of equations with matrices
15. Engaging students: Solving one-step and two-step inequalities
16. Engaging students: Solving quadratic equations
17. Engaging students: Square roots
18. Engaging students: Translation, rotation, and reflection of figures
19. Engaging students: Using right-triangle trigonometry
20. Engaging students: Volume and surface area of pyramids and cones

If I’m still here at that time, I’ll make a summary post like this again when this blog has over 200,000 page views.

I really enjoyed this:

I love this quote from Math With Bad Drawings about why students should learn math:

In every walk of life, humans need to reason. So of course, they can learn these intellectual skills in other places. You don’t need math. But gosh, does math make it easier!

You can learn to taxonomize in biology, by considering the classification of organisms. But your taxonomies will never be perfect, because life doesn’t fit into neat little boxes. (I’m looking at you, protists.)

Life doesn’t… but math does.

Or you can learn to dissect arguments in civics. But emotions will flare. It’ll be tough to agree on premises. And even if you do, words like “justice,” “freedom,” and “common good” are subject to fuzzy interpretations and subtle misunderstandings. All words are like that: a little vague, tricky to pin down.

Except in math.

Logic shows up everywhere. But in math, it’s the whole game. Math isolates the operations of logic and reason so that we can master them.

In short: math is the playground of reason.

I recommend the entire article: https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2016/06/08/a-quadratic-of-solace-or-maybe-math-class-has-a-purpose-question-mark/