<p>Ha! I bet you thought I was going to talk about politics!</p>
<p>So the little guy started fifth grade this week. Tonight’s the first night of homework. Mommy is incapable of translating the math instructions to English. Oh this is going to be a long year.</p>
<p>What sort of freak writes a poem about math?</p>
<p>Ah zmom, I don’t miss those days of “helping” with the crazy math.</p>
<p>LOL! Enjoy the 5th grade! I thought it was those pesky arts and crafts projects that were so annoying for my sons (and for me)!</p>
<p>Having had two girls ahead of him, I’ve come to learn a very hard truth.</p>
<p>Boys have it much harder with art projects because girls can pour glitter all over anything and call it good.</p>
<p>Oh dear zoo! I remember those days long ago. I get a head ache just thinking about them. Hope your head won’t be throbbing too badly by nites end!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>A few. Not many.</p>
<p>Numbers, fractions, digits, signs,
I stare at walls and bide my time.
I’m wishing class was through and done,
could go outside and have some fun.</p>
<p>Carl Sandburg wrote (in part): Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.
Arithmetic tell you how many you lose or win if you know how
many you had before you lost or won.
Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven – or five
six bundle of sticks.
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand
to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and
you can look out of the window and see the blue sky – or the
answer is wrong and you have to start all over and try again
and see how it comes out this time…</p>
<p>I love that first line.</p>
<p>Get yourself a copy of [url=<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Math_Curse]Math”>Math Curse - Wikipedia]Math</a> Curse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia<a href=“can’t%20believe%20it%20has%20it’s%20own%20Wikipedia%20page!”>/url</a> and give your child my standard answer. “I’ve already been through ___ grade. You’ll have to figure it out yourself.”</p>
<p>everyday math???</p>
<p>Everyday math, the Sandburg poem is on the page, and I bow before VioladDad.</p>
<p>Here’s a clever math song:</p>
<p>Finite Simple Group (of Order Two)</p>
<pre><code>The path of love is never smooth
But mine’s continuous for you
You’re the upper bound in the chains of my heart
You’re my Axiom of Choice, you know it’s true
But lately our relation’s not so well-defined
And I just can’t function without you
I’ll prove my proposition and I’m sure you’ll find
We’re a finite simple group of order two
I’m losing my identity
I’m getting tensor every day
And without loss of generality
I will assume that you feel the same way
Since every time I see you, you just quotient out
The faithful image that I map into
But when we’re one-to-one you’ll see what I’m about
‘Cause we’re a finite simple group of order two
Our equivalence was stable,
A principal love bundle sitting deep inside
But then you drove a wedge between our two-forms
Now everything is so complexified
When we first met, we simply connected
My heart was open but too dense
Our system was already directed
To have a finite limit, in some sense
I’m living in the kernel of a rank-one map
From my domain, its image looks so blue,
‘Cause all I see are zeroes, it’s a cruel trap
But we’re a finite simple group of order two
I’m not the smoothest operator in my class,
But we’re a mirror pair, me and you,
So let’s apply forgetful functors to the past
And be a finite simple group, a finite simple group,
Let’s be a finite simple group of order two
(Laughter: “Why not three?”)
I’ve proved my proposition now, as you can see,
So let’s both be associative and free
And by corollary, this shows you and I to be
Purely inseparable. Q. E. D.
</code></pre>
<p>It’s pretty catchy, too. You can search for it on YouTube.</p>
<p>Ooh thanks corranged.</p>
<p>My D did everyday math in grades 4/5, it was experimental, she is excellent in math potential. We had to reteach her long division the old fashioned way. I find when a kid has good math ability and comprehension, the everyday math is too simple, they don’t know how to break it down that simply. It would be like asking you to define 1+1=2 in some other way, you just “know” it and cannot explain it.</p>
<p>I could see the point of trying to explain all that to some one who has not got a math brain, but that seems like it is too complex, they’d rather have a right answer.</p>
<p>Our district began an experimental algebra in grade 7 for the top kids to try to get every one else in algerbra by grade 8, some statewide goal. We had to have DD tutored by Grandpa all summer in Algebra 1/2 to catch up with the kids who had not taken EM in earlier grades.</p>
<p>EM is a pain- maybe enrichment, but not for basics</p>
<p>Then there’s this one on New Math - I think there are several versions on You Tube:</p>
<p>[YouTube</a> - Tom Lehrer - New Math](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXx2VVSWDMo&feature=related]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXx2VVSWDMo&feature=related)</p>
<p>The Tom Lehrer song is great. Luci Kaplansky sings a song about Pi that her Dad wrote.</p>
<p>I don’t envy you zoos. … A number of years ago, my 4th grade next door neighbor came over and asked for help on her math homework. (I don’t know where her parents were.) Well, we bumbled around and eventually made some progress, though it tough going. Anyway, my neighbor went on to become a Rhodes Scholar, recently got her PhD in planetary science from MIT, and is teaching this year at Harvard as a Harvard Fellow. It’s all because I was there for her. So, soldier on, zoosermom. :)</p>
<p>One of my favorite singer/songwriters is Lucy Kaplansky. She will occasionally perform a song written by her late father, Irving Kaplansky, who was a fairly famous mathematician. The melody of the song is derived from the numbers of pi. So, the answer to your question is, mathematicians write songs (and poems) about math. :D</p>
<p>A SONG ABOUT PI (Irving Kaplansky)</p>
<p>In all the bygone ages,
Philosophers and sages
Have meditated on the circle’s mysteries.
From Euclid to Pythagoras,
From Gauss to Anaxag’ras,
Their thoughts have filled the libr’ies bulging histories.
And yet there was elation
Throughout the whole Greek nation
When Archimedes made his mighty computation!
He said:</p>
<p>CHORUS</p>
<p>3 1 41 Oh (5) my (9), here’s (2) a (6) song (5) to (3) sing (5) about (8,9) pi (7).
Not a sigma or mu but a well-known Greek letter too.
You can have your alphas and the great phi-bates, and omega for a friend,
But that’s just what a circle doesn’t have–a beginning or an end.
3 1 4 1 5 9 is a ratio we don’t define;
Two pi times radii gives circumf’rence you can rely;
If you square the radius times the pi, you will get the circle’s space.
Here’s a song about pi, fit for a mathematician’s embrace.</p>
<p>You can tell I’m not a mathematician, right? I’m a competent, serious woman and I’m out of my league. I can, however, do long division. Maybe I’ll have him write a few long divison problems and call it poetry.</p>
<p>When my daughter entered 9th grade 5 years ago, she got her first B in math (geometry). I was never that involved with her school work before. When I said I would help her with it, she thought I was out of my mind. Up until that point, I have never told her of my major in college. I showed her how to use axioms and how to do proofs. She ended up with an A+ for the course. She had new respect for me after that. I only did it because I didn’t want to spend money for a tutor. I did that one other time for her for Physics - centripetal vs centrifugal force. The other day she called me up from college about a differential equation problem, I told her that I have reached my limitation and it’s time to tap into the tuition we are paying.</p>
<p>That’s a great progression oldfort!</p>