Teachers and BIDMAS, BODMAS, PEMDAS, GEMS, etc

Here's one for you:

Do even maths teachers argue about this? by T. Briggs, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

But before we get onto that, have a think about this one:

\[8 \div 2 \times (2 + 2) \]

I've had a post on this subject in mind for (quite literally) years, but it's such a contentious topic I haven't dared to commit it to HTML until I was sure it was ready. The problem is that with anything involving mathematics the conversation very quickly descends into complaining about maths teachers and listing what they're doing wrong and what they should be doing right, and how horrible and evil and lazy they all are. So:

Maths teachers are hard-working, knowledgeable gifts to society. This post is not intended in any way to be a criticism of these real-world superheroes. They are an endangered species as it is and I'm sick of seeing ill-informed vitriol directed at them online. Anybody who takes anything in this post and uses it to attack maths teachers hasn't understood it at all. The problems with mathematics in modern Western society are many and varied, and cannot be solved by maths teachers alone. Any proposed solution to these problems that begins with "maths teachers should..." is short-sighted at best.

 Now that's out of the way I can return to my theme.

Maths in the Movies: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

The 5th movie in the Indiana Jones series was released in the UK on 28th June 2023. Amongst the fans in my circle of friends it has been well-received, certainly more so than the 4th instalment (Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) was. This isn't a general review^[1], but a brief discussion of some of the mathematical themes that make an appearance.

I'll do my best to make the following spoiler-free, but as I'm discussing things that happen in the movie I can't guarantee that I'll manage. With that in mind, if you haven't yet seen the movie the safest course of action would be to lock this post in a snake-ridden vault and grab your hat & whip and head out to the cinema before reading any further.

Do Maths Teachers Think They're Mathematicians?

A topic that pops up time and time again in an online community of maths communicators that I am a member of is who gets to call themselves a mathematician?^[1] Something I've wondered for a while is how maths teachers see themselves: Do they feel comfortable referring to themselves as a "mathematician"? Do they want to be included in that set?

Tokikom. Anboto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I did the only thing that can be done in such situations: I employed that most rigorous of statistical tools, the Twitter poll.

Books with Maths in Them: Diaspora (Greg Egan)

Greg Egan is an author I hadn't encountered until Albert recommended one of his books in response to my request for 'books with maths in them'.

Diaspora is, at the time of writing, available for only 99p on Amazon Kindle.

Diaspora, released in 1997, is a science fiction novel set some time after much of humanity has left behind corporeal form to become software-based beings living in simulated realties. They interact with the 'real' universe by way of a network of probes, sensors, drones and digital archives spread out across the solar system and collectively known as the Coalition of Polises, with the post-humans who exist within it referred to as Citizens. Some people eschewed this mass-migration and remained as biological entities (known as Fleshers) but have since formed a variety of communities representing the span of possibilities between using science to heavily modify their genes (for longevity, improved intelligence, or to thrive in extreme environments, for example), and just letting nature take its course. Somewhere in between are the Gleisners who transmuted into digital form but inhabit individual, flesher-shaped robots in order to interact more closely and personally with the real world.

Green's Windmill & Science Centre: Museum Review

It's not immediately obvious where Green's Windmill and Science Centre is in relation to the signposted car park, which is shared with a nursery school. It might seem strange that an entire windmill can hide behind a small school, but it took a bit of wandering before realising that there's a path to the side of the school. Once on this path the windmill came into view, the flaking paint of its white dome hinting at its age and modern usage.

Green's Windmill & Science Centre by T. Briggs is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

It's one of those small local museums that's run by love rather than money, an observation supported by the Green's Windmill Trust plea for donations of time, money or skills to help in its mission to keep the sails turning and promote the reputation of George Green. The trust began as a small band of enthusiasts aiming to preserve a piece of local heritage, becoming a registered charity in 2012.

Kindle Scribe Software Update: New Pen Styles

 ... and as if by magic Amazon have released an update for the Kindle Scribe.

An email arrived on Tuesday 28^th Feb announcing an update, which would either automatically arrive on my Scribe at some point, or I could download and install it manually. Of course, I didn't wait.

The update does address a few minor things that appear on my Scribe wish list:

My Kindle Scribe Feature Wishlist

Don't want the back-story & just came for the list? Click here.

I've had a Kindle since Christmas Day 2010. It was a Kindle Keyboard 3G: one of those with a free mobile internet connection so you could download new books on the fly, hassle free. My mum got it for me for Christmas and, twelve-years-and-counting later, it's still going strong. I've always loved it^[1], and I've regularly been tempted to upgrade to a new model but didn't because, well, I had no reason too. None of the following models added anything I needed or even that I particularly coveted.

Amazon's long-discontinued Kindle Keyboard 3G

For twelve years there was only really one thing I could think of that would make me want to upgrade my Kindle to a new model. For twelve years I waited.

And then it came.

The VISITOR Project, part 0: An introduction

In February 2023 I attended a training event hosted by the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University in Milton Keynes, designed to introduce us to VISITOR, a project aimed primarily at teachers but of explicit relevance to educators in the heritage sector too.

It's possible to wander around various heritage sites, including the British Museum, via the medium of Google Street View (try it, above), but should virtual visits be limited to simply recreating the physical visitor experience in the digital domain?

This started as a review of the training, but I found the project so fascinating it became more of a commentary on the broader project and its outputs, growing beyond all sensible bounds for just one post. I decided to split it into a series of (approximately)^[1] four posts, each dedicated to a VISITOR project output (see below).

I hope that it may be of use to fellow educators in the education and/or heritage sectors. I welcome and encourage further discussion related to anything written in this series but it must be made clear that I have no official relationship with the project: it just ticks a host of boxes related to my professional and personal interests.

How Can I Support My Child in Learning Maths?

A normal week has 168 hours in it. Assuming 8 hours sleep a night^[1], that's 112 waking hours for doing everything else, including learning things. In a school week, children spend somewhere between 3 and 5 hours in maths lessons^[2] depending on various factors such as which school they go to and what year they're in. That, using the middle of that range, is about 3.5% of a teenager's working week.

TLDR: Model resilience & positivity, and engage with the subject in front of and with them, just like you would in any other area of their development.

What does ChatGPT Think About Maths?

The chances are you've heard of ChatGPT, but you might not know what it is. Just in case, I asked it what it was. It said:

"ChatGPT is a conversational artificial intelligence language model developed by OpenAI. It uses state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms and a massive dataset to generate human-like responses to natural language inputs. ChatGPT is trained on a diverse range of topics and can answer a wide range of questions, making it an extremely versatile AI system. It can be used for various applications, such as customer service, knowledge base, language translation, and more."

I didn't have an image for this post so I asked DALL·E 2 "what does ChatGPT look like?"

Why Should Mathematics be Studied Beyond Age 16?

I recently applied for a job ¹ and in preparation for the interview I was told that I would be 'invited to talk for 5 minutes on why mathematics should be studied after GCSE'. I thought that I'd adapt the result into a blog post. So here it is:

MATHS by Klara CC BY-NC-SA 2.0