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Gregory Alan Jamison
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Gregory Alan Jamison
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| Classes CURRENT CLASSES My Spring 2022 Schedule Graph paper link Zoom meeting link Genius Scan (for converting photographs on your phone to pdf documents) Open Source Software (Free Stuff!) mathematical packages:
FCC Links and Information Personal Interests and Projects Miscellaneous Links: One of my students trying to log in to the campus network Mathematical Association of America Lockhart's Lament Devlin's Angle Conic animation Search Engines: |
I do not teach math because it is useful; I teach it because it opens doors into new understanding, and also because it's a lot of fun. Arithmetic can help people spend wisely at the grocery store, but that is not math. Real math is something to play with for fun and relaxation. When math starts being "useful" it has often moved so far past the game it began as that it may no longer be real math. In this sense, what is taught in schools is not pure math. I believe that it is possible to teach in such a way that students can learn both the useful aspects of math and the fun ones! I try to spend at least some class time talking about mathematics, not just about how to do the homework. Remember, math is all about asking questions, not answering them! Also, math may be fun, but the fun is in the challenge... math is not always easy. Math is not fun unless you work to understand it! Math is all about asking questions, so make sure to ask a lot of them in class. It helps everyone when one person asks a question; usually a lot of people want to understand the same thing you do. Do homework until you understand it, not just until you can get a right answer. My tests often require a deeper understanding of the material. While memorizing is a useful technique, it will be difficult to memorize all that you need to know for my classes. I will show you how to derive necessary formulas so memorization is not necessary. Calculators are useful tools, but they cannot and will not do your problems for you. I often design my test problems so that calculators will not be useful in solving them to make sure students understand the material, and can't rely on a calculator to think for them. Remember, real math is fun! If you're interested, I have fun math books, puzzles, and activities for you to try. Please ask about anything mathematical you might find interesting.
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