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August 2016
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Matter, Anti-matter and “Cancels out”

explosionMatter and anti-matter cancels out (violently I might add).    The airlines can cancel your flight.  You can’t cancel out in Math (instead you “reduce” or “divide”).  If you do try to cancel out, bad things can happen.  Let me explain.

Our Department abolished the phrase “Cancels out” a long time ago, and now we use phrases such as “reduces to 1“, “divides to 1 over 1“, etc. which demonstrates the math operation not some magic.  We also always replace numbers and variables that reduce with a number even if it’s one (see below right).

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The Mad Farmer (a.k.a my introduction to Calculus)

I actually start my students on Day 1 teaching them the fundamentals of both derivatives and integration.  MadFarmer
It’s exciting and it shows them (via my Mad Farmer worksheet) that they already know a lot about Calculus and that it’s relevant to real life (they’ll argue with me that a mad farmer on a tractor doesn’t seem relevant but you get my point).  I feel if you jump right into Limits (or worse, a boring PreCalculus review), it just sets a tone of boredom (and sometimes despair).  To be fair, I actually assign it as homework and then discuss all of Day 2. I even include an actual free response problem that they can do after they finish part 1 of this worksheet! Continue reading