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Posts about Carnegie Mellon and greater Pittsburgh.
Smart People Opens Today!
April 11th, 2008 | No Comments
They filmed part of Smart People in my building. Lots of my fellow grad students managed to catch a glimpse of Dennis Quaid. I didn’t, because I sort of didn’t care enough to go look.
Democratic Presidential Primary Yada Yada Yada
March 27th, 2008 | No Comments
The political ads have started airing in Pennsylvania, even though the (closed) primary is still a month away.
Just in time for me to officially be tired of primary season. The longer people wrangle about whether or not Clinton landed amidst sniper fire or whether or not Obama’s pastor is an America-hating racist, the more I am reminded of this.
Algebra and Arithmetic Education
March 16th, 2008 | 1 Comment
I’m going to argue that algebra is so hard to learn because students never really understand arithmetic to begin with. Math is inherently abstract*. If you only learn to do math in concrete terms, in the way that most elementary math is taught, you are not really learning how to do math. You are learning to be a calculator (and there’s no reason to learn how to be a calculator, because we have perfectly good ones already). But if you really understand the arithmetic, then algebra should be pretty easy.
