A longtime reader of Turtle Talk, Jeff LeMieux, of Oak Harbor, WA, sent in a suggestion based on my post yesterday about positive and negative slope. Jeff found a way to help students remember not only positive and negative slope, but also the infinite slope of vertical lines, and the 0 slope of horizontal lines […]
Archive | Coordinate Plane
Some ideas just slap you in the face. I got slapped this morning as I was flying home from LA to Albuquerque. Those little cocktail napkins they hand out with “beverage service” often give me the urge to write. So this morning, nerdily enough, as I sipped my orange juice at 30,000 feet above the […]
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One of the legends of math relates to the invention of the coordinate plane system. The legend states that Descartes was inspired to invent this system after watching a fly move around on the ceiling over his bed. This post tells the story and points out its relevance for modern math teachers.
Answer to Problem of the Week, regarding travel of a pair across the American Southwest.
Problem of the Week on how to find distance from one point to another, for two people on a sightseeing trip through the western United States.
Which two digit numerals will reflect and look the same across the horizontal axis? Which will reflect across the vertical axis?
Variables do not all serve the same purpose. Making this clear helps students more deeply understand algebraic equations, such as the equation for a line. This post shows how to understand the two kinds of variables in the slope-intercept form of a linear equation.