bodmas blog

Tony Crilly’s 50 Maths Ideas you really need to know is a smallish book with short summaries of some nice maths, see the scan of the back of the book for a list of the topics. The list includes zero, infinity, pi and e, as well as some geometry (including discrete geometry) and some probability concepts. The articles are three or four pages long, and they are written at a level where a beginning AS student or someone with more limited algebra could understand the main points. Many diagrams and plenty of continuous prose, nice metaphors.

The other reason I like this book is that it gets beyond arithmetic to real maths. So often in English speaking countries we get hung up on arithmetic so that many students never really learn about the logic of mathematical arguments, or about the huge range of applications. I am not suggesting that arithmetic is not important, and I am most certainly not suggesting ‘maths by colouring in’, but some wider content in GCSE and Access courses at level 2 might help motivation and change opinions I think.

Coming soon: my own top twenty mathematical ideas for level 2 maths….

Suggestion: Get the students searching on an idea each and see if they can come up with a Web page that they understand on their topic. Post back to forum. Evaluate.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 30/05/08 and is filed under Learning, Maths. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.