New math

1. Forgot how to find the slope of a line.
2. Tried to express the difference between ( 2 Sin x) and ( 5 Sin x) by yelling out what they would sound like if you turned them into sounds.
3. Pointed the overhead projector out the window instead of at the screen.
4. Taught us the difference between vertical and horizontal.
5. Took a little bit too long to reduce 36/108 to 4/12, and just as long to reduce that to 1/3.
6. Made sure that we were fully aware that Moses descended from the mountains with the Ten Commandments and not with the knowledge of how to determine square roots.
7. Brought a rope to class and tried to hold it up to demonstrate different graphs rather then drawing them on the board. Complications arose when she realized that she only had two hands.
8. When a student asked, "Can I ask you a question?" she cleverly replied, "You just did!" Needless to say, no one thought that was very funny.
9. Taught us that a good way to remember what an exponent is is to remember that is has the letter "x" in it. That was the only explanation she gave.
10. Told us that she offers extra credit points for every time you tell her about an "interesting" mistake you made on your homework. She also grants extra credit for not knowing how to do a problem and asking her how to do it. Since these assignments are not turned in, you are rewarded absolutely no points for knowing how to do all the problems and doing them all correctly.
11. This extra credit is added up when, at the end of class, she passes around a piece of paper and you write down your name and how many extra credit points you earned that day.
12. One assignment each week is actually handed in for credit. I answered three out of the five problems incorrect but still managed to receive 9.5 points out of a possible 10.
13. She explained 1-dimensional, 2-dimensional, and 3-dimensional objects. She then portrayed what a 2 1/2-dimensional object was by violently wadding up a piece of paper into a ball and holding it out to us. She later realized that she needed that piece of paper to make copies of the homework assignment for the class.
14. The only reason she was talking about 2 1/2-dimensional objects in the first place was because she thought 1 + 1/2 + 1/2 = 2 1/2.
15. Told us that as the year went on, we'd be learning more things about math.
16. After she illustrated the difference between f(x) = sin x and f(x) = x^2, she advised us to just sit back for a minute and take it all in. So we did.
17. Admitted that half the math problems out there are just impossible.
18. Since homework is due not at class time but at midnight, there is good reason to believe that she lives in her office.
19. Admitted that she doesn't have enough brain cells to know what pi is.
20. Used her superior math skills to estimate that the answer to one problem was somewhere in between 100 and 1,000.
21. Advised us to never ever graph (-3)^x because the result would be way too weird for us to handle.
22. Had the ingenious idea to combine math and gym class, which she demonstrated by moving her arms around frantically so that they looked like certain graphs. No one else did it.
23. The number 3 reminds her of an accordion.
24. Said that math is an escape from the real world and those who do math cannot deal with reality.
25. One of the problems on a past assignment asked us to write an equation that when graphed, would show the emotional ups and downs of a friend.
26. Said that she might have invented the distributive property, but she wasn't really sure.
27. Some students lost points on their homework assignment for using logarithms to solve certain problems because she had not taught us that method yet. Other methods, such as guessing, were accepted.
28. Taught us various ways to use our calculators to cheat on the test.
29. Determined that 2000/400 was "probably" 5.
30. A student raised their hand in class and the teacher called on her by saying, "I have no idea why, but I am so determined to call you Sarah right now." The student responded by saying, "Probably because that's my name."
31. Admitted that she spent a lot of her childhood hanging on to an electric fence for as long as she could.
32. When the word asymptote comes up, she is the one who is quick to point out that it starts with "ass".
33. Asked us, "What's the graph look like for this equation?" When no one said anything, she just started dancing around for some reason.
34. She showed up for class one day and the lights were off. She said, "No wonder you guys are always in the dark." I knew it was going to be a bad day.
35. Said that if we didn't like the grade we got on the test, we could just make our own test and do that one instead.
36. Informed us that while driving, we'd still have to depress the accelerator if we wanted to keep moving at a uniform speed. Apparently it isn't just for accelerating.
37. Has the amazing ability to somehow associate any math problem with the time she went to Australia.
38. Direct Quote: "The facts of life is this is a parabola." I have no idea what she could have possibly meant by that.
39. Showed her mastery of the English language by successfully using the word "maximumly" in a sentence.
40. Told us that it's possible for a math problem to be its own grandma.
41. Asked us if we were surprised when 1/2 X 40 ended up being 20.
42. A student messed up on a problem and told the teacher what she had done. The teacher got all excited and said, "Oh, I like that!"
43. Said that Tuesday seemed like a "bizillion" years ago.
44. Told us that although we understood the problem, we'd probably get all confused again once we were further away from her aura.
45. Said that doing integrals is like driving with a clutch; in that you don't know how it works but you do it anyways.
46. She's a retired high school math teacher.
47. When one student raised both their arms above their head to stretch, she asked the student if he had two questions.

...loudness is logarithmic with amplitude...

Of course, it also depends on the frequency (different frequencies with the same amplitude aren't percieved as the same loudness), but I figure that simply saying "three times as loud" should serve the purpose of "learning sin waves by asking how would they sound."

also, as far as the "problem can be its own grandma", I realize now that I could have used a much simpler example, such as "what is y, if y = -x", but then I wouldn't have been able to show off my knowlege of hyperbolic functions :)

as a former math tutor myself, I must sympathize with this teacher who may have possibly gone over the deep end after years of trying to teach math. Maybe she's just a flake, of which there are many in the math field - doesn't mean they don't know math or can't teach it though.

a few comments on the author's comments...

1. Forgot how to find the slope of a line.

of course she didn't. she may have said so just to get a little class participation by letting someone in the class explain how.

8. When a student asked, "Can I ask you a question?" she cleverly replied, "You just did!" Needless to say, no one thought that was very funny.

well, I think its funny. depends how she said it.

14. The only reason she was talking about 2 1/2-dimensional objects in the first place was because she thought 1 + 1/2 + 1/2 = 2 1/2.

lots of us math guys make mistakes all the time with simple addition and subtraction. I do all the time. doesn't mean we don't know math.

19. Admitted that she doesn't have enough brain cells to know what pi is.

of course she knows what pi "is", she might not have the value memorized to ten decimal places. maybe that's what she meant.

20. Used her superior math skills to estimate that the answer to one problem was somewhere in between 100 and 1,000.

what was the problem? I could easily come up with a problem that would be almost impossible to estimate even when given that large of a range.

21. Advised us to never ever graph (-3)^x because the result would be way too weird for us to handle.

well, it is. also, I think she knew that by saying this, she's going to create curiosity and actually cause her students to try to graph it, and then try to understand it.

24. Said that math is an escape from the real world and those who do math cannot deal with reality.

wow, there's a lot of truth to that. remember the movie, "A Beautiful Mind"? yeah, sure math is an escape, and a fun one, too.

38. Direct Quote: "The facts of life is this is a parabola." I have no idea what she could have possibly meant by that.

I don't either. why didn't anyone ask her?

44. Told us that although we understood the problem, we'd probably get all confused again once we were further away from her aura.

as a former math tutor, I can attest that this is often true.

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