Year 3 mental arithmetic: Sets 5 and 6

This week I have the following two sets of mental arithmetic questions published for 3 years. They concentrate on one-step problems, recalling addition and subtraction facts up to 20, adding and subtracting multiples of ten and know 5 and 4 times tables.

There are several ways that these questions can be used and how children to answer them. It is sometimes a good idea to use a numeral cards, so that children can keep up the answer. Number of fans a similar goal. Sometimes you might want to be called the answers, or to be written. The sheets of the question can be used for this purpose.

Y3 mental arithmetic set 5 and 6

Bad boys of physics

In the July issue, about Lenny Susskind Scientific American runs a bad boy or Physics story (see also here). Here is the "nut graph":

Physicists want to understand the deepest levels of reality now largely working within a framework of Susskind. But a funny thing happened along the way. Susskind wonder or physicists reality can understand.

In the interview, Susskind explains that he was a bad boy as a youth, but "just so much better than anyone else, including the professor." In recent years he is the most prominent promoter of the string theory multiverse, and now claims that this pseudo-science convincing the area dominates (SciAm seems agree ...), with the situation like in the early days of QCD:

A large part of the physics community has left trying to explain our world so unique, as the only mathematically possible world. Right now the multiverse is the only game in town. Not everyone is working, but there is no coherent, sharp discussion against it.

In 1974 I had an interesting experience on how scientific consensus forms. People worked on the as yet untested theory of hadrons [subatomic particles such as protons and neutrons], that Quantum Chromodynamics or QCD is called. At a Conference of physics I asked, "you people, I would like to know your belief about the likelihood of QCD the correct theory of hadrons." I took a poll. Nobody gave it more than 5 percent. Then I asked: "what are you working on?" QCD, QCD, QCD. They worked all on QCD. The consensus was formed, but for some strange reason, people wanted their skeptical side. They wanted to be hard-nosed. There is an element of the same thing around the multiverse idea. A lot of physicists don't want to just fess up and say, "look, we do not know another alternative."

Susskind had a DISTINGUISHED career as a theorist for many years, and has managed to do very well with his multiverse campaign for quite a while now. There's a lot of coverage of this story on this blog, for some high points, see here, here, here and here.

In other news, the media full of stories about another physicist who has been a bad boy, David Flory. He began his career as a HEP theorist back in the late 1960s, as a student at the Yeshiva University, and collaborator with Susskind. Just as a large number of other people, he got his permanent academic job in 1969, and has since then at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Year 5 Division problems: calculation of mentally

Here is the second page that year 5 Division problems who looks using mental skills can be answered. The questions deal with a number of concepts relating to Department, including:

scrap

divisibility rule for 9

and factors.

Watch out for errors that in issues such as number 9 occur, where the number of whole lengths of wire is calculated and the rest is irrelevant.

This page, and other similar worksheets can be found in the year 5 category.

Division problems (2)

Year 4 mathematics worksheet: tenths of rectangles

A good way of working with decimals is the use of shapes that are divided into ten equal parts. The form is a single whole and each part is a tenth, which can be written as 0.1.

This page has a selection of shapes and asks the child to write down the amount that is gray. When all parts of a shape are shady this counts as ten tenths, or entire one.

While the printed pages almost always display the decimal point located on the line most schools show like half way up the line: the main thing is that it appears clear.

This page can be found in our year 4 mathematics worksheets in Counting the number and category.

Tenths of rectangles (1)

Year 1 mathematics vocabulary

If a child does not respond on a mathematical question can it be because they don't understand the words or instructions used. Another problem can occur when a mathematical term has a different meaning in everyday English, for example, ' table '.

In the category of mathematics year 1 there is an excellent list of the vocabulary children needed to understand and use in year 1. For example, the following list has the new words that they are in school in year 1 encounter have to do with the compute and solve problems.

Words to do with the compute and solve problems:

plus near double

How much more is. ..?     how much less is. ..?

subtract min

half                                     halve

equals sign

number sense

operation

There are similar lists for the calculation, measures, and position. These words may greater be printed so that they can be used as ' flashcards ' or displayed on the wall.

Go to the year 1 vocabulary lists.

Local Blogs

There are now several excellent blogs somehow to mathematics is carried out by the local population, including a few new ones, so I thought that would be a good idea to mention here these related:

Andrew Gelman of Columbia Statistics Department runs the very active Statistical Modeling, causal inference and Social Science blog, which boasts a wealth of all kinds of different subjects, from technical ones about statistics, to social sciences applications.Emanuel Derman, who began his career as a HEP theorist, was one of the early migrants to the financial industry and now has here teaches at Columbia in the Financial Engineering program, a new blog at Reuters. His last book was the very interesting my life as a Quant, this autumn, he has a new coming out right models worn Badly. Cathy O'Neil, a mathematician who learned here for a while before you change career path, starting with a job at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw, has recently started with the beautiful Mathbabe blog. I think I mentioned this already, but one of my colleagues, Johan de Jong (Cathy's husband) also has a blog, the stacks Project Blog. If your metrics to evaluate blogs like "quality of information is" x "degree of abstraction and technical", are the best blog in the world.

If you have comments on these blogs, I encourage you to post them there rather than here. I would be interested in hearing about any other local mathematics/physics related blogs that I am not aware of.

Update: another local mathematics, physics-related blog has made its debut today, Davide Castelvecchi degrees of freedom. It is part of a network of new blogs today being launched by Scientific American, who is based in New York.

Toddlers and Math

Learning mathematical concepts actually beginning with toddlers. After all, think about how excited a toddler is when they tell you they are going to be 2 years or 3 years old. They are so quick to parrot those numbers, although they are still not sure about conservation of number or number correspondence. However, it is a great time to promote number concepts and develop a joy of math in concrete methods. discover what these early number concepts are and how to use them to promote and develop the significance of those years toddler and beyond.

See also: math concepts learned in kindergarten.