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[Fake World] It’s “Real” If They Can Argue About It
Hans Freudenthal changed the conversation from “real world” to “realistic world“: The fantasy world of fairy tales and even the formal world of mathematics can provide suitable contexts for a problem,...
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[Fake World] Limited Theories of Engagement
Let’s just call them “theories of engagement” for now. Every teacher has them, these generalized ideas about what engages students in challenging mathematics. Here’s the theory of engagement I’m trying...
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[Fake World] The New York Times Goes All-In On “Real World” Math
In case this whole series seemed to you like a bit of a straw man (it did to Kate Nowak and Michael Pershan) here’s the New York Times Editorial Board: A growing number of schools are helping students...
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[Fake World] The “Real World” Guarantees You Nothing
There were two particularly useful comments in response to this problem: gasstationwithoutpumps: The moment of inertia for rotating a I-beam about its long axis has no practical relevance in structural...
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[Fake World] Teaching The “Boring” Bits
tl;dr Provoking curiosity in our students about anything requires us to manage several tensions simultaneously. It requires keeping several lines tight – not slack – but not so tight they snap....
View Article[Fake World] Culture Beats Curriculum
a/k/a Worshipping The Real World Here are three e-mails I received from three different people over the last three months. Spot the common theme. November: My co-teacher and I were puzzling over what...
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Dear Mathalicious: Which Of These Questions Is “Real World”?
An ongoing question in this “fake world” series has been, “What is real anyway, man?” Are hexagons less real-world to an eighth-grader than health insurance, for example? Certainly most eighth graders...
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[Fake World] Real-World Math Proves Tough To Pin Down
tl;dr – “Real world” is tougher to measure than “interest” and less important overall. So rather than asking which of these three different versions of a word problem is more “real world” I asked a...
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Real Work v. Real World
“Make the problem about mobile phones. Kids love mobile phones.” I’ve heard dozens of variations on that recommendation in my task design workshops. I heard it at Twitter Math Camp this summer. That...
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Can Sports Save Math?
A Sports Illustrated editor emailed me last week: I’d like to write a column re: how sports could be an effective tool to teach probability/fractions/ even behavioral economics to kids. Wonder if you...
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