The
official publication of the New Mathwright Library
and Café:
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We
are especially pleased to learn that many of the new visitors to the Library
are Homeschool students or Homeschool teachers. Our Library was really designed
to accommodate independent learners, and so we would like to extend a special
welcome to you. The Library is a growing resource that you may use at your leisure
to improve your understanding of a wide variety of mathematical topics, whether
part of some curriculum or not.
Since
the Library is so large, we offer in this article a few suggestions that may
help you use it more effectively. Since we are a content-neutral resource, we
do not align ourselves with any particular school or curriculum. But we do offer
a number of tools that you may use to discover the material that you may want
to read.
The
most powerful of these is the "Text Search
Wizard" at the entrance to the Stacks. There, you may type any textual
description of the topic you seek (including keywords, author, title, or topics)
and you may select the level (Elementary through Advanced) and Category Room
and Subject Room to which the work might belong.
If
you leave the text blank, it searches for ALL workbooks that satisfy your other
criteria.
As an example, we searched for books that might start a High School student
along an independent course of study in arithmetic and algebra (starting at
the beginning).
We
left the Text field blank, and selected High School for the Level,
both Algebra and Arithmetic for the Subject, and Home Study
for the Category. The result was 4 WorkBooks:
If
a student would read the WorkBooks in this order, she could go a long way towards
getting comfortable with beginning algebra.
As
another example, we asked for material that might prepare an advanced High School
student for college algebra. We left the Text field blank again to get
all the holdings, and selected High School for the Level, and this time,
College Algebra for the Subject, and Home Study for the Category.
The result was 7 WorkBooks:
The
WorkBooks in the two selections have very little overlap, because they were
selected on different Subjects. Independent learners might select private courses
of study for themselves in a thousand different ways using the Text Wizard,
and Homeschool Teachers might design programs for their students in the same
way. We would like very much to accommodate the needs and interests of independent
learners, so please send us your questions and suggestions at our Contact
Us page. And, again, welcome!
We
have added two new WorkBooks to the Library Stacks this month! The first, written
by Mike Pepe of Seattle Central Community College, is titled: Transformations
of a Function. It is designed for High School and Beginning College Students
(or for independent learners at those levels).
It
offers a variety of animated experiments that will help you see its topics in
a way that you may not have seen (or understood) before. If you know what the
graph of y = f(x) looks like, then do you know what the graph of y = f(x-2)
looks like? And what about the graph of y = f(x+2) or of y = f(3*x) ? If you
had to stop for a moment to think about it, then you are like the rest of us.
But if you were unable to see "what to do," then this WorkBook is definitely
for you.
The
WorkBook is full of experiments that will show you with many built-in examples
various standard transformations of functions and their associated graphs. In
each case it will help you see how an algebraic transformation leads to a geometric
transformation of the graph of f.
The
second new WorkBook is a Demonstration WorkBook that you may read with the Free
Player 2.1. You will find it on the "Free Stuff" page. It is written by Dan
Kalman and Angela Hare, and is titled: How
to Draw a Star.
Have
you ever drawn a 5-pointed star with 5 lines of equal length, without lifting
your pencil from the paper? Not a regular pentagon, but a star. Why can't you
do this for a 6-pointed star (a Star of David?) When can you do it, and when
not? These are some of the simple and fascinating questions that this WorkBook
visits, while it explores some simple themes in geometry and logo-style line
drawing. It is full of experiments that may (we hope) leave you with more questions
than answers.
April
is Math Awareness Month. In celebration of this event, we are holding a contest
at the Student Center of the New Mathwright
Library and Cafe. We will give free 1-year subscriptions to the Library
to the first five visitors who solve the two problems we posed there.
Just
visit the Student Center, and you will find them. One is fairly easy, and the
other is more difficult. We will leave it to you to decide which is which.
These
problems were chosen because they illustrate and celebrate the historical fascination
with the relations between number and geometry that has long inspired mathematical
development in many areas of research. To submit your solutions, send us a Comment
at our Contact Us page, and be sure to include
your email address. We will then ask you to mail us your complete solutions.
These solutions will be posted at the Library under your names.
James E.
White, Ph.D.
Library
Director