let’s talk about x

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Mathematics Educators Stack Exchange

By Christian Lawson-Perfect. Posted March 25, 2014

There’s a new Stack Exchange site for mathematics educators to ask and answer questions to do with the teaching of mathematics.

To give you an idea of what the site’s for, here are a few interesting questions that have already been asked:

How can I estimate the length of an exam? (top answer: do it yourself, and multiply by 8)
What is a good handwriting font for mathematics? (more data for Let’s Talk About X, which provoked a lot of discussion here a while ago)
How to assign homework when answers are freely available or attainable online? (top answer: remember the true meaning of ~~Christmas~~ homework)

The site is quite US-oriented at the moment because of who’s using it, but it doesn’t specifically exclude non-Americans from its remit.

Visit: Mathematics Educators Stack Exchange

The Joy of $x$, by Steven Strogatz

By Christian Lawson-Perfect. Posted November 23, 2012

Steven Strogatz has written a book based on his series of columns for the New York Times, The Elements of Math. The book’s called The Joy of $x$, and Steven’s recorded a trailer for it. I bet he hopes the trailer will convince you to buy the book.

[youtube url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPttaSg8ySc]

By Christian Lawson-Perfect. Posted August 29, 2012

It’s an unpresupposing little letter, $x$. In fact, that’s the reason we use it to represent something we don’t know. But how do you write it down? When Vijay Krishnan tweeted a link to an American college professor’s page on mathematical handwriting, I was shocked to learn that he thought adding a hook to a simple cross was sufficient to differentiate letter-$x$ from times-$\times$.

So I asked our Twitter followers how they write $x$. The Cambrian explosion of diversity in answers I received was eye-opening – I’m glad I asked!