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For questions in Mathematics Education as a scientific discipline. For more hands-on questions on teaching Mathematics, please use the tag teaching. There is also a Stack Exchange community http://matheducators.stackexchange.com/

10 votes

What kid-friendly math riddles are too often spoiled for mathematicians?

The shortest path of a fly walking on the interior surface of a cubic room:       Image credit
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
10 votes

Great graduate courses that went online recently

Discrete Differential Geometry Keenan Crane, Carnegie Mellon University, Spring 2021.    ]
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
0 votes

One-step problems in geometry

(1) Prove: Every simple polygon may be triangulated (partitioned into triangles) via diagonals, vertex-to-vertex segments that are strictly interior (except at their endpoints). [This is a precursor t …
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
23 votes

How to explain to an engineer what algebraic geometry is?

This is along the lines suggested by @DonuArapura: "describe a problem [...] that is reasonably concrete and accessible, and go from there." Here is a problem an engineer would appreciate: Which bent …
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
22 votes

Interesting and accessible topics in graph theory

I have found that the Art Gallery Problem engages middle- and high-school students, and quickly leads to the unknown, which itself can be eye-opening to students. (On the latter point, students tend t …
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
5 votes
Accepted

Lecture on Fractals for Middle School Students

Your task is both a challenge and an opportunity: they will be unfamiliar with complex numbers, but perhaps you could motivate the utility of complex numbers. I might try to introduce them to the comp …
Glorfindel's user avatar
  • 2,821
40 votes

Short papers for undergraduate course on reading scholarly math

I think this is a delightful paper: Hull, Thomas C. "Solving cubics with creases: The work of Beloch and Lill." The American Mathematical Monthly 118, no. 4 (2011): 307-315. (PDF download.) It …
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
9 votes

"Mathematics talk" for five year olds

See "Picture-Hanging Puzzles" by Erik Demaine et al. (arXiv link):           
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
35 votes

Taking "Zooming in on a point of a graph" seriously

An animation of your first example, $y=x(x−1)(x+1)$. I limited the number of frames so that the file would not be too huge (it is ~1MB now). Frame rate is browser and processor dependent. At best thi …
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
13 votes

Anything special (historical?) about surface $x\cdot y\cdot z\ +\ x+y+z=0$?

Just wanted to see what it looks like... Now added origin and axes $\pm 1$ in each coordinate.
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
1 vote

How can I combine my interests for pure mathematics and computer science in college?

As HA Helfgott suggests, at many schools, it is quite feasible to simply double-major in math and in computer science. NYU, as you mention, offers a joint major in math and computer science, includin …
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
18 votes

Is there a database for tracking the dependencies of mathematical theorems?

Not an answer, just a diagram from the Stacks Project, mentioned by Paul Siegel, illustrating dependencies of "the results needed to prove Chow’s Lemma" (the Noetherian case):                 (Im …
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
20 votes

How do you mentor undergraduate research?

"...should the student work on open problems...?" I think that working on open problems is fine—even exciting—if you follow Pólya's advice in How to Solve It: "If you can't solve a problem, the …
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
3 votes

Numerical equality testing

There is a thread of work that derives from W.-T. Wu's work on geometry theorem proving, and this seminal paper by Schwartz, Schwartz, Jacob T. "Fast probabilistic algorithms for verification of p …
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
13 votes

Review papers in mathematics

Two excellent sources: The AMS series, What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences (AMS link). Now eight volumes. Barry Cipra, a frequent contributor to MO, has authored many of the articles. The …
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar

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