# Four ways to compute a probability

I have a guest blog post that appears on the White Group Mathematics blog here. (My first guest post!) Here’s a taste:

One thing I love about math, and particularly combinatorics and probability, is the fact that many methods exist for solving the same problem.

Each method may have its advantages. The advantage might be conceptual (as in “this makes most sense to me”) or the advantage might be computational (as in “this is the fastest way to do it”).

Discussing the merits of different methods is exactly what math class is for!

For example, check out this typical probability question that could appear in a Precalculus course:

The Texas Ranger pitching staff has 5 right-handers and 8 left-handers. If 2 pitchers are selected at random to warm up, what is the probability that at least one of them is a right-hander?

In fact, it’s one I use in my own Precalculus course and it generated a great class discussion. In teaching it this past year, I ended up showing students four ways to do the problem this year! Here they are…

For the epic conclusion of this post, visit White Group Mathematics. :-)

# MAA Distinguished Lecture Series

If you live in the DC area and you like math, you have no excuse! Come to the MAA Distinguished Lecture Series.

These are one-hour talks, complete with refreshments, all for free due to the generous sponsorship of the NSA. The talks are at the Carriage House, at the MAA headquarters near Dupont Circle.

Here are some of the great talks that are on the schedule in the next few months (I’m especially excited to hear Francis Su on May 14th).

I’ve been to many of these lectures and always enjoyed them. Robert Ghrist‘s lecture was out of this world (here’s the recap, but no video, audio, or slides yet) and was so very accessible and entertaining, despite the abstract nature of his expertise–algebraic topology.

And that’s the wonderful thing about all these talks: Even though these are very bright mathematicians, they go out of their way to give lectures that engage a broad audience.

Here’s another great one from William Dunham, who spoke about Newton (Dunham is probably the world’s leading expert on Newton’s letters). Recap here, and a short youtube clip here:

(full  talk also available)

So, if you’re a DC mathophile, stop by sometime. I’ll see you there!

# Math on Quora

I may not have been very active on my blog recently (sorry for the three-month hiatus), but it’s not because I haven’t been actively doing math. And in fact, I’ve also found other outlets to share about math.

Have you used Quora yet?

Quora, at least in principle, is a grown-up version of yahoo answers. It’s like stackoverflow, but more philosophical and less technical. You’ll (usually) find thoughtful questions and thoughtful answers. Like most question-answer sites, you can ‘up-vote’ an answer, so the best answers generally appear at the top of the feed.

The best part about Quora is that it somehow attracts really high quality respondents, including: Ashton Kutcher, Jimmy Wales, Jermey Lin, and even Barack Obama. Many other mayors, famous athletes, CEOs, and the like, seem to darken the halls of Quora. For a list of famous folks on Quora, check out this Quora question (how meta!).

Also contributing quality answers is none other than me. It’s still a new space for me, but I’ve made my foray into Quora in a few small ways. Check out the following questions for which I’ve contributed answers, and give me some up-votes, or start a comment battle with me or something :-).

And here are a few posts where my comments appear:

# USA Science and Engineering Festival

If you’re local, you should go check out the USA Science and Engineering Festival this weekend. It’s on the mall in DC and everything is free.

They will have tons of booths, free stuff, demonstrations, presentations, and performances. Go check it out!

For my report on the fest from two years ago, see this post. The USA Science and Engineering Festival is also responsible for bringing to our school, free of charge, the amazing James Tanton!

# I ♥ Icosahedra

Do you love icosahedra?

I do. On Sunday, I talked with a friend about an icosahedron for over an hour. Icosahedra, along with other polyhedra, are a wonderfully accessible entry point into math–and not just simple math, but deep math that gets you pretty far into geometry and topology, too! Just see my previous post about Matthew Wright’s guest lecture.)

A regular icosahedron is one of the five regular surfaces (“Platonic Solids”). It has twenty sides, all congruent, equilateral triangles. Here are three icosahedra:

Here’s a question which is easy to ask but hard to answer:

How many ways can you color an icosahedron with one of n colors per face?

If you think the answer is $n^{20}$, that’s a good start–there are $n$ choices of color for 20 faces, so you just multiply, right?–but that’s not correct. Here we’re talking about an unoriented icosahedron that is free to rotate in space. For example, do the three icosahedra above have the same coloring? It’s hard to tell, right?

Solving this problem requires taking the symmetry of the icosahedron into account. In particular, it requires a result known as Burnside’s Lemma.

For the full solution to this problem, I’ll refer you to my article, authored together with friends Matthew Wright and Brian Bargh, which appears in this month’s issue of MAA’s Math Horizons Magazine here (JSTOR access required).

I’m very excited that I’m a published author!

# A TOK Lecture on Mathematical Thinking

Students in our International Baccalaureate program here at RM are required to take a core class called Theory of Knowledge (TOK) which is kind of a philosophy class for high school students–or, at least the epistemology piece.

In some schools, this course is taught by math teachers. Here at RM, no math teachers currently teach TOK, which is too bad. So I volunteered to put together a guest lecture on Mathematical Thinking. I’ve tried it out once with a TOK class and I gave the lecture for some of my math teacher colleagues today after school. I plan to give the lecture to more TOK classes this spring.

I thought I’d share it with the MTBoS as well, so here it is. Feel free to read, comment on, or borrow my materials. I think other IB math teachers would especially benefit:

# One thing that makes my class unique

Photo from Flickr.com, credit Alan Cleaver, under Creative Commons License.

What’s one thing that makes my class unique?

We play Two Truths and a Lie.

Let me explain. I teach 150+ kids each semester (which means I get new ones in January). I used to think that my job was to teach the material, and the kids didn’t need to like me for that mission to be accomplished. It doesn’t matter what they think of me. That’s not my job, so I reasoned. But thanks to reading awesome books like The Essential 55, The Excellent 11 (both by Ron Clark), and most important, Teaching with Love and Logic (Jim Fay and David Funk), I now know that’s completely and totally false. Here’s the truth: You can’t teach students until they like you.

Getting to know my students has become a major part of what teaching means to me now. The Mr. Chase of eight years ago would never have done a get-to-know you activity at all, since it takes valuable instructional time.

The trouble is, it’s super hard to get to know 150 students in one semester. Even learning their names is a monumental task. The cursory get-to-know-you activity on the first day is cool, and better than nothing, but can you really get to know 150 students in ONE DAY? I still do a little mini, fun first-day activity. But here’s an additional, deeper activity that I’ve come to love.

On the first day of class I hand out index cards. I don’t ask students for their information anymore. I can get their parents names, email addresses, phone numbers, address, and more, through our school’s database, just as you probably can. So asking for that information is a waste of time as far as I’m concerned–it’s just busy work for them. Instead, on their index card, I ask them to write their name and Two Truths and a Lie. They can give it to me after the 45 minute period is over. I tell them they can work on it while I’m going over the syllabus, if they find me boring :-). They can even turn it in the next day if they really want to craft an excellent set of statements that will fool their classmates.

Have you ever played this game? Here’s how it works: You write down three statements about yourself, two of which are true and one of which is false. Then people try to guess which statement is the false statement. Students share things that are interesting and unusual–things their closest friends in the class might not even know.

“I speak four languages”

“I have two dogs and a turtle.”

“My grandmother lives in Portugal.”

“I’ve never broken a bone.”

“I’ve been to five continents.”

“I’m a black-belt in Jujitsu.”

“I don’t like chocolate.”

“My dog’s name is Bubbles.”

When you play this at parties, it takes a while–a minute or two for each person. And of course you want to discuss the results afterward. “What languages do you speak??” “Okay, your dog’s name isn’t Bubbles. But do you have a dog? What kind is it? What is its name?”

So if it takes a while, and you want to take your time, how do you fit it into class time? Well, I have a stack of them at the front of the room and whenever we have extra time, throughout the first month or two of school, we pull a random card (or a few) and meet that student. I say “Today we’re going to meet Robert…everyone say hi Robert!” and everyone says “HI ROBERT!!” (way less corny when it actually happens; don’t worry they love it!). Then we read Robert’s card, and on the second reading everyone is required to raise their hand upon hearing the statement they think is false. Great fun. And afterward we ask Robert some follow-up questions.

It’s a fun activity and lets us genuinely get to know one another and learn very unique things about each other. I give them my own Two Truths and a Lie on the first day of class as an example:

1. I’ve done tricks on a flying trapeze.

2. I lived in Peru for a year.

3. My parents have chickens in their backyard.

(Feel free to make guesses as to which of my statements is a lie.)

This was a unique idea to my class, but some of my other teacher friends have adopted it now, so perhaps it doesn’t qualify anymore :-).

This blog post was in response to the prompt, “What is one thing that happens in your classroom that makes it distinctly yours?” which I was encouraged to answer as I participate in the Exploring the MathTwitterBlogosphere challenge. More challenges to come! (And more blog posts, I’m sure!)

Happy Metric Day, by the way!