This Week in Math Ed: January 12, 2018

I don't think I'll need or be able to scour 35+ research journals every week for new articles, so maybe I'll try to do that every other week, or maybe once a month. In any case, here's some of what was popular in the world of math education for the week of January 5th to January 11th, 2018.

Math Ed Said

January 5: This article appeared once here last week, and now it appears twice this week: Sunil Singh's "Six Questions That Math Educators Need To Answer Honestly." My short answer to Question 1, "What is mathematics?": Mathematics is the human activity of reasoning with number and shape. A slightly longer answer would explain that this reasoning produces the artifacts that we associate with mathematics, but particularly as an educator I keep the definition focused on math as a human activity, as Freudenthal did.

Shared by: Eddi Vulić, Richelle Marynowski, Pam J. Wilson, Keith Devlin, Zack Patterson, Dan Meyer

January 6: Again: "Six Questions That Math Educators Need To Answer Honestly."
Shared by: Nita Cochran, Emily Stewart, Dave Martin, Steven Strogatz, Kyle Pearce, Eric Milou, Dan Meyer, Zach Cresswell, Federico Chialvo, Gary Davis, Kat Hendry, Meleia Bridenstine, Alison Hansel, Hilary Kreisberg, Matthew Oldridge

January 7: Heidi Fessenden wrote "Counting Collections: One Nearly-Perfect Answer to Inclusion," a reporting of what's happening with her students when children with and without autism pair up to count collections of objects. Heidi is a thorough storyteller and it's a story I needed to hear, as I've been helping write a state policy document for students with disabilities and stories like this keep my head rooted in practice.

Shared by: Marilyn Burns, Rosa Serratore, Megan Franke, Melinda Knapp, Elham Kazemi, Alison Hansel, Annie Forest, Kassia Wedekind, Jana Sanchez, Andrew Gael, Jamie Garner, Tracy Johnston Zager, Heidi Fessenden

Is your district making segregation worse?

January 8: Want to get lost in some policy, maps, and data? Spend your time on this feature from Vox: "Mapping the imaginary lines we use to segregate our schools." Based heavily on some new work by Berkeley PhD candidate Tomas Monarrez, you can use this tool to explore segregation patterns in districts across the country and understand the policies and historical reasons that shaped them.

Shared by: Jennifer Lawler, Shawna Hedgepeth, Kent Haines, Heidi Fessenden, Michael Soskil, Kit, Thad Domina

January 9: If you missed it on the 8th, here it is again on the 9th: "Mapping the imaginary lines we use to segregate our schools."

Shared by: Morgan Fierst, Kara Imm, Dylan Kane, Elizabeth Self, Samantha Marshall, Karen King, Theodore Chao, Thad Domina, Tyrone Martinez-Black, Heidi Fessenden

January 10: After spending all that time looking at segregation patterns, give yourself a chance to chuckle with Ben Orlin's "Compass Constructions Made Easy."

Shared by: Anna Blinstein, Nathaniel Highstein, Chris Burke, Jo Morgan, Ilona Vashchyshyn, Denise Gaskins, Ryan R Ruff, Jennifer White, Jennifer Lawler, Jen Silverman, Ben Orlin, Michael P Goldenberg

January 11: There's probably a context to this I missed, or maybe this is a new feature: A Desmos graph where the Desmos logo spins around.

Shared by: Sadie Estrella, Bryn Humberstone, Shawna Hedgepeth, Lisa Bejarano, Allison Krasnow, Nerissa Gerodias, Vanessa Cerrahoglu, Kathy Henderson, Heather Sugrue, Andrew Shauver, Jennifer Blinzler, Christopher Danielson, Jocelyn Dagenais, Dan Anderson, Jason Merrill, Shelley Carranza, Jennifer Fairbanks, Mary Bourassa, Jocelyn Dagenais, Eli Luberoff