Measuring teachers’ beliefs about mathematics

January 13, 2009 / Reidar Mosvold / Leave a comment

M.A. Lazim and M.T. Abu Osman have written an article called Measuring Teachers’ Beliefs about Mathematics: A Fuzzy Set Approach. The article was published in the current issue of International Journal of Social Sciences. Here is the abstract of their article:

This paper deals with the application of a fuzzy set in measuring teachers’ beliefs about mathematics. The vagueness of beliefs was transformed into standard mathematical values using a fuzzy preferences model. The study employed a fuzzy approach questionnaire which consists of six attributes for measuring mathematics teachers’ beliefs about mathematics. The fuzzy conjoint analysis approach based on fuzzy set theory was used to analyze the data from twenty three mathematics teachers from four secondary schools in Terengganu, Malaysia. Teachers’ beliefs were recorded in form of degrees of similarity and its level of agreement. The attribute ‘Drills and practice is one of the best ways of learning mathematics’ scored the highest degree of similarity at 0.79860 with level of ‘strongly agree’. The results showed that the teachers’ beliefs about mathematics were varied. This is shown by different levels of agreement and degrees of similarity of the measured attributes.

Mathematics in Early Childhood (book)

January 8, 2009 / Reidar Mosvold / Leave a comment

A new and interesting book has been published (or is about to be published) by the National Academies Press: “Mathematics in Early Childhood: Learning Paths Toward Excellence and Equity“. The book has 560 pages, and it costs $51.26 when ordered online. So far, the book appears to be available for pre-order only.

Gem #3: Newton’s Principia

January 7, 2009 / Reidar Mosvold / Leave a comment

Isaac Newton is arguably one of the greatest scientists (and mathematicians) of all times, and his Principia is one of the great works from the history of mathematics. Together with Leibniz, Newton is normally acknowledged as the founder of differential and integral calculus. If you want to download Principia to your computer, you can head over to the Internet Archive. The original was in Latin, but you can read an English translation below:

Newton’s Principia

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epiSTEME 3

January 7, 2009 / Reidar Mosvold / Leave a comment

A little more than a month ago, Mumbai (India) was the venue for a three-day massacre that caught the world’s attention (see for instance this Newsweek article). This week, a far more peaceful event takes place in Mumbai, namely the 3rd International conference to review research on Science, TEchnology and Mathematics Education (epiSTEME 3). The conference presents a number of interesting main speakers, but unfortunately there appears to be little or no live coverage. As far as I can tell, none of the presentations are put online, but you can still get an impression by reading the extensive list of abstracts.

The cost of poor math skills

January 5, 2009 / Reidar Mosvold / Leave a comment

The National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (UK) presents the news of a new report about “The long term cost of numeracy difficulties“. The report concludes that poor skills in mathematics ends up costing the society an enormous amount of money. BBC reports:

Children who are bad at maths at school end up costing the taxpayer up to £2.4bn a year, a report suggests.

Head of distrubution and product at Barclays, Mike Amato said to BBC:

We are very conscious that every child needs basic numeracy skills for survival.

This is also discussed in The Times and other sources. A key message is that spending money on mathematics education will save us a lot of money in the future.

If you have more information on this, links to other sources, similar studies in other countries, etc., feel free to leave a comment!

Gem #2: Hilbert’s "The Foundations of Geometry"

January 5, 2009 / Reidar Mosvold / Leave a comment

David Hilbert (1862-1943) was one of the most important mathematicians of last century. He worked most of his life in Göttingen, which had a very important mathematics center at the time. Here, Hilbert was surrounded by excellent mathematicians like Felix Klein, John von Neumann, Ernst Zermelo, Emmy Noether and more.

One of Hilbert’s achievements was to initiate a shift towards a more modern axiomatic method in mathematics, and in particular in geometry. In relation to this, he proposed a research project, called “Hilbert’s program”, which aimed at formulating a solid and complete logical foundation for mathematics. Hilbert’s “The Foundations of Geometry” is therefore one of the most important modern works in mathematics, although his program did not succeed. The book is therefore a natural follow-up for Gem #1: Euclid’s “The Elements” (which is regarded as one of the most important mathematics texts ever, and in particular related to geometry). If you want to download the book in pdf format, you can go to the Gutenberg Project. Otherwise, you can read it here:

David Hilbert – The Foundations of Geometry

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Gem #1: Euclid’s Elements

January 2, 2009 / Reidar Mosvold / Leave a comment

When I was a student, I was lucky enough to study in a school which had a very good library of books related to mathematics and mathematics education. Nowadays, you can study many of the great classical texts online. In 2009, I am going to share with you several gems that I have found online. In my quest for these texts on mathematics/mathematics education, a natural first stop is with one of the greatest mathematical texts of all times: The Elements, by Euclid.

Here is the text:
Euclid Elements

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You can also download (or read online) this great book in Google Books. See these two links for two versions of the text.

Happy new year, and happy reading!

Blog tips: "Wild about math!"

December 30, 2008 / Reidar Mosvold / Leave a comment

Sol Lederman has a very nice blog about mathematics, and the focus is on “making math fun and accessible”. The blog itself is called “Wild About Math!“, and it is definitely worth checking out!

Sol has written much about learning mathematics by doing mathematics, and he appears to have a special interest in solving mathematical problems. One of the things Sol often writes about is the so called Monday Math Madness problem from the Blinkdagger blog. Lots of people already subscribe to the blog, and you can too! It’s easy!

A good idea for starters would be to read some of Sol’s featured articles. The first five are:

TMME, No 1/2 2009 is here!

December 23, 2008 / Reidar Mosvold / Leave a comment

I gave a pre-announcement of this two days ago, but now the first number of The Montana Mathematics Enthusiast for 2009 is ready for everyone to read. The feature themes in this double-issue is statistics education, and mathematics education research in the southern hemisphere. The first section of the issue has a number on articles on this: