“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” –Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice It is almost certainly a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen’s opening line from her great novel is one of the most
Recently I blogged about how to compute a weighted mean and showed that you can use a weighted mean to compute the center of mass for a system of N point masses in the plane. That led me to think about a related problem: computing the center of mass (called
As 2015 comes to a close, let's look back on the great year at SAS Curriculum Pathways. Again, we saw record-breaking new users, soaring student usage, and tons of app downloads. While we love all of our 1,500+ resources, here are the ones that teachers and students used the most in
Lo how a rose e'er blooming From tender stem hath sprung As I write this blog post, a radio station is playing Chrismas music. One of my favorite Christmas songs is the old German hymn that many of us know as "Lo, How a Rose E're Blooming." I was humming
Throughout my 13 years of teaching, I heard this question time and time again from parents: How can I help? The troubles they specified were varied and numerous (e.g., concern, frustration, bewilderment). They often included the following: I don’t remember algebra. I don’t like math. The way math is taught now differs
Curriculum Pathways has an Algebra 1 Course. That’s right, an entire standards-aligned course! And this resource is much more than a typical math textbook. PLUS, it’s a cross-platform resource! Yes, you read that correctly, cross-platform. That means this resource can be used on the PC, iPad, and Chromebook. And it
Mobile is at the forefront of our edtech development here at SAS Curriculum Pathways—not simply because it's the hottest emerging hardware technology entering classrooms around the world, but because of the exciting possibilities it brings to traditional learning environments. We’ve known for years that simply dropping off hardware in the classroom
Solving equations and inequalities are essential skills in mathematics. And for many students, practicing is the key to success in solving. As students work on the concept of solving equations/inequalities at home, many think, "How will I know if I’m doing it right?" One answer is the Practice Solving Series,
In my article about finding an initial guess for root-finding algorithms, I stated that Newton's root-finding method "might not converge or might converge to a root that is far away from the root that you wanted to find." A reader wanted more information about that statement. I have previously shown
Have you ever seen a problem similar to this on social media sites? 5 - 1 x 0 + 3 ÷ 3 = ? Is the answer 1 or is it 6?* Or did you get something completely different? Here’s another example.
"Daddy, help! Help me! Come quick!" I heard my daughter's screams from the upstairs bathroom and bounded up the stairs two at a time. Was she hurt? Bleeding? Was the toilet overflowing? When I arrived in the doorway, she pointed at the wall and at the floor. The wall was
Equations that involve trigonometric functions can have infinitely many solutions. For example, the solution to the equation tan(θ)=1 is θ = π/4 + kπ, where k is any integer. In order to obtain a unique solution to the equation, we define the "arc" functions: inverse trigonometric functions that return a
Last week I was chatting with some mathematicians and I mentioned the blog post that I wrote last year on the distribution of Pythagorean triples. In my previous article, I showed that there is an algorithm that uses matrix multiplication to generate every primitive Pythagorean triple by starting with the
“Mathematics has beauty and romance. It’s not a boring place to be, the mathematical world. It’s an extraordinary place; it’s worth spending time there.” – Marcus du Sautoy. I agree, there IS beauty in mathematics, and I genuinely love math! Math is vital to everyday life from young kids learning
Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Although it is a non-terminating, non-repeating number, the decimal approximation 3.14 and the fraction 22/7 are typically used to represent the irrational mathematical constant. The Greek letter π, was first used as the symbol for pi in 1706 by
The latest version of SAS Math Stretch includes several exciting new features! Designed to develop elementary math skills and number sense, this free app includes activities focused on counting, number relations and operations, and telling and manipulating time. Students can even calculate pi! The all new activities include Number Bonds and Largest
Mobile devices are arriving in classrooms around the world in soaring numbers. Chromebooks and iPads are everywhere – from 1:1 programs to BYOD to carts classes can share. Why is that important? Because these devices have the power to change the classroom, provided teachers have the right integration strategies and lesson
Mathematics, what a beautiful subject. It requires inquisitiveness, perseverance, and critical thinking. It promotes discourse, challenges the mind, and creates problem-solvers. Unfortunately, it also scares many students and adults. Why is that? How can one subject cause so much joy and at the same time so much discomfort? As a
Early math skills—such as number sense, number relations, pattern identification, estimation, and measurement—are the foundation for future math achievement. By mastering these basic concepts, young students can engage in more complex cognitive processing and develop higher-level math skills. Also, early math achievement has been linked to an increased likelihood to take
Math is essential to a successful career in computer science. That’s right! Jobs such as those listed below require algebra, calculus, discrete math, and other courses. Software engineer/developer (every industry) Social network analysis Gaming Anti-terrorism/cybercrime/fraud detection Data scientist (sports/business/finance) Math and computer science share terminology and notation. Computer scientists use math
Pascal's triangle is the name given to the triangular array of binomial coefficients. The nth row is the set of coefficients in the expansion of the binomial expression (1 + x)n. Complicated stuff, right? Well, yes and no. Pascal's triangle is known to many school children who have never heard of polynomials
When I studied high school geometry, I noticed that many homework problems involved right triangles whose side lengths were integers. The canonical example is the 3-4-5 right triangle, which has legs of length 3 and 4 and a hypotenuse of length 5. The triple (3, 4, 5) is called a
Since 1999, SAS Curriculum Pathways has been making a difference in the lives of students, teachers and parents. And that impact doesn’t stop at international borders. Several schools in South Africa have implemented SAS Curriculum Pathways, including one school in the Diepsloot area. Murray de Villiers, General Manager: Academic Program
Teachers can’t just give brilliant, isolated lectures or conduct fascinating, stand-alone activities and hope students will somehow connect these diverse components into a cohesive whole. To help students master the fundamentals of any discipline, teachers must build units of integrated materials that highlight essential connections and satisfy a variety of
The Algebra 1 Course provides all the required content to address the Common Core State Standards for Algebra. Course content engages students through real-world examples, images, manipulatives, animations, videos, guided practice, and targeted feedback. As students work through the course content to develop problem-solving, critical thinking, and reasoning skills, they
As a pre-service teacher, one of the most exciting, challenging, exhausting, and rewarding experiences is student teaching. During my student teaching semester, I was placed in a Common Core Math 1 class at a high school in Wake County, North Carolina. I found that as a CCM 1 teacher, understanding the mathematical content is
The Common Core State Standards have certainly heightened the focus on statistics in math classes. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the middle grades, where the emphasis on data has not simply increased, but increased dramatically. Middle grades teachers looking for resources to help their students become statistically literate–and meet Common Core State Standards–will find
Although I currently work as a statistician, my original training was in mathematics. In many mathematical fields there is a result that is so profound that it earns the name "The Fundamental Theorem of [Topic Area]." A fundamental theorem is a deep (often surprising) result that connects two or more
Prime numbers are strange beasts. They exhibit properties of both randomness and regularity. Recently I watched an excellent nine-minute video on the Numberphile video blog that shows that if you write the natural numbers in a spiral pattern (called the Ulam spiral), then there are certain lines in the pattern
Editor's Note: Jenny Kelley teaches third grade in Pitt County, NC. She recently earned certification as a SAS® Curriculum Pathways® Master Teacher. On January 23, information for the 2014-2015 Master Teacher Program will be available on our web site. In this guest post, Jenny describes some of the SAS Curriculum Pathways resources she uses
