For mathematical reasons which I explain below, I have looked up the expression “The writing on the wall” in the Wikipedia. It is, of course,  illustrated there by Rembrandt‘s ‘Belshazzar’s Feast‘, and, which nowadays sounds very topical, by a stanza from  Jonathan Swift‘s “The Run Upon The Bankers”:

A baited banker thus desponds,
From his own hand foresees his fall,
They have his soul, who have his bonds;
‘Tis like the writing on the wall.

The full text can be found at http://www.online-literature.com/swift/3501/ ; it is accompanied by a footnote from Dublin Edition of 1734:

This poem was printed some years ago, and it should seem, by the late failure of two bankers, to be somewhat prophetic. It was therefore thought fit to be reprinted.

And now back to mathematics: I have looked up Mene, Mene, Tekel u-Pharsin because I need an English word which characterises a collection of objects (think about a warehouse) in which objects of every kind are counted and their number is known and recorded. Inventoried? I need to use it in expressions like “inventoried group”, “inventoried field”, “inventoried ring”, “inventoried structure”, and many times on each page in a series of papers.

Can you suggest a better term? I would be most grateful.

 

And this pastiche is an update of the old theme, quite consonant with Swift:

CDS trading percent upfront

I was asked to distribute this appeal from “mathy parents” to support their fascinating project: to build an Creative Commons book  and an open access  depositary with resources for  kids’  mathematical activities.

We would like to ask you to help in any way you can, and spread the word, to create an open parent activity book and site for the youngest kids. You know many people who care.

http://tippingbucket.org/projects/moebius-noodles

We are building a Creative Commons book and support site for parents who want to enjoy math with their kids.

The project, starting with the book, will build a community providing peer-to-peer support for parents in ways not currently available elsewhere. From responses from our pilot tests with local math clubs and online parent classes, we expect users of Moebius Noodles to significantly change their approach to early education and their very definition of what mathematics means. We start with the existing parents’ needs and wishes which we have studied and analyzed. We address those, but take them to the next level of mathematical sophistication.

Please contribute to the Moebius Noodles fundraising campaign, and spread the word on your blogs and sites about helping to create open and free materials for the youngest mathematicians!

Why are we doing it and why do you care?

1. There are very few materials and no community support for smart math for babies and toddlers. Just try to find anything that is not about counting or simple shapes! Mathy parents create opportunities for their own kids, of course. But without support and resources, it’s very hard even for the rocket scientist mothers and fathers. We want to change that!
2. Peer-to-peer learning, research and development groups in mathematics education need a process for crowd-funding their projects. We are the trailblazers for other fabulous communities that want to make open and free math materials with the support of their members, such as the group developing materials for learning mathematics through music, the play math network, and the math circle problem-solving depository project.
3. We are creating OERs – Open Educational Materials. It means people can access, use, modify and share the materials for free. Imagine the project you support translated into any language in the world, and used freely to support young kids everywhere!
4. The activities are sustainable in many senses. You can use everyday household items and recycle materials for Moebius Noodles games.
5. If you are a parent or teacher who loves arts and crafts but is afraid of math, the book will help you teach your kids mathematics through your talents. If you are a math or science geek who envies other families always doing neat art projects, the arts-math bridge in the book goes both ways!

More info at http://www.naturalmath.com/blog/moebius-noodles-fundraiser/

From David Cameron‘s recent speech on schools:

“For the first time, unless sixty per cent of their pupils achieve the accepted level – Level 4 – in English and maths at Key Stage 2, they’ll be judged to be failing.”

I wonder: how many parents actually understand what does it mean: “Level 4 at Key Stage 2″?

Am I alone in finding the terminology used in English education system being  non-intuitive,  not transparent and therefore counter-productive?

Also, I am a bit uncomfortable about creating what appears to be a new hurdle to jump — for schools, and, inevitably, for children.  But I am not an expert on primary education. Any opinion?

A very though-provoking article by Matt Richtel in the NYT. A random quote:

Xavier Diaz, 6, sits quietly, chair pulled close to his Dell laptop, playing “Alien Addition.” In this math arcade game, Xavier controls a pod at the bottom of the screen that shoots at spaceships falling from the sky. Inside each ship is a pair of numbers. Xavier’s goal is to shoot only the spaceship with numbers that are the sum of the number inside his pod.

But Xavier is just shooting every target in sight. Over and over. Periodically, the game gives him a message: “Try again.” He tries again.

[With thanks to muriel]

In my opinion the Vorderman Report contains some sensible (although not very deep) general statements. Meanwhile at the level of concrete recommendations the Report appears to be flawed.

To save time, I briefly discuss only a few recommendations from the Report. Their analysis suggests that the Report missed, or its authors were afraid to raise, a few key issues. The most important of them is the need to revise the National Qualifications Framework and its principle that any two qualifications taught in parallel for the same length of time are equivalent (it is this principle that justifies the existence of “dummy” courses).

4.4 Each school should have the responsibility for adopting or creating its own mathematics programme.

The report says that teachers have insufficient mathematical knowledge; how could Recommendation 4.4 be implemented in absence of properly trained and knowledgable teachers?

In real life, the free market for curricula will be dominated by exam boards who will compete with each other in making their curricula easier to teach and tests easier to pass.

6.3-6.4 Full support should be given to the twin GCSEs during their pilot phase. The twin GCSEs should be seen as the first step towards a national provision that will meet the needs of all students, and should be led, managed and developed accordingly.

In plain English, this appear to suggest that twin GCSEs should be introduced regardless of the outcome of the pilot. This looks as an anti-scientific approach.

Two parallel GCSEs, one “harder”, and one “easier”, will lead to confusion with pre-requisites, sequencing and timing of material, basic scheduling problems. It is stronger students who will suffer from the ensuing mess and be put off mathematics.

The National Qualifications Framework forced invention of two equal modules; but, in my opinion the two twin GCSEs should be taught consecutively for those students who will be later taking full A-levels in mathematics,, while those students who will not be taking full A-levels in mathematics, should take only the first (easier) module, appropriately stretched over the two GCSE years. For this second group of students, who at the present time are entirely lost for mathematics, KS5 study of mathematics should be based on material from the second GCSE module, allowing them to get by the end of school some qualification similar (but not identical) to the full set of two GCSEs, but not equivalent to A Level Mathematics for the purpose of university admissions. These new GCSE pair will be different from the currently piloted twin GCSEs proposal because new GCSEs have to be designed for different purpose.

The key obstacle to this common sense solution is the National Qualifications Framework.

8.3 A variety of types of A level syllabus should be allowed and encouraged, including both modular and linear. A review is needed to ensure that the design features of good modular syllabuses at this level are better understood by those responsible for writing and approving them. [...]

Modular A level syllabi will easily win market competition over linear syllabi, because they are easier by default (even if of lower quality).

10.2 University departments offering degrees in STEM subjects should consider increasing the level of mathematics in their offers and in the advice they provide to applicants.

This is extremely naive. University are autonomous and act within a competitive market, which will soon become even more competitive. Any mechanisms that will ensure compliance with these demands will be counterproductive and lead only to further growth of red tape. In particular, the new AAB+ rule for students’ places allocation is incompatible with Recommendation 10.2.

11.1 The examination boards should be required to offer a number of syllabuses designed by responsible external bodies and consortia.

AQA, for example, already has about 60 mathematics qualifications on offer. Who needs more? 11.1 is a direct recommendation to keep untouched the flawed and dysfunctional system of examination boards.

Also, I have concerns about “responsible external bodies and consortia.” With all the talk of international comparisons, UK appears to be the only country without a proper National Curriculum authority which takes full responsibility for developing, monitoring and amending National Curriculum and which has resources and expert staff for doing so.

I discovered that this nowadays famous formula (popularised in Paul Lockhart’s essay A Mathematician’s Lament) was coined by James Joseph Sylvester in 1864:

Herein I think one clearly discerns the internal grounds of the coincidence or parallelism, which observation has long made familiar, between the mathematical and musical ἔθος. May not Music be described as the Mathematic of sense, Mathematic as Music of the reason? the soul of each the same! Thus the musician feels Mathematic, the mathematician thinks Music,-Music the dream, Mathematic the working life-each to receive its consummation from the other when the human intelligence, elevated to its perfect type, shall shine forth glorified in some future MOZART-DIRICHLET or BEETHOVEN-GAUSS -a union already not indistinctly foreshadowed in the genius and labours of a HELMHOLTZ!

[JJ Sylvester, Algebraical Researches, Containing a Disquisition on Newton's Rule for the Discovery of Imaginary Roots, and an Allied Rule Applicable to a Particular Class of Equations, Together with a Complete Invariantive Determination of the Character of the Roots of the General Equation of the Fifth Degree, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 154 (1864), pp. 579-666 (footnote on p.613).]

This is an article in The Telegraph. Some quotes:

The problem is most acute in deprived areas, where researchers found half of youngsters have communication difficulties when starting school.

Jean Gross, the government’s communication champion for children, said she discovered the problem while speaking to head teachers in Hull and London.

“They told me that they had seen a number of cases of children arriving for their first day at school who did not know their name or that they even had a name.” [...]

“We do have a problem. Anecdotally, it’s getting worse from what head teachers say.”

 

 

BBC about Chinese higher education:

The authorities are trying to slow down the expansion of higher education. ”They realise it’s a problem to produce students with high expectations,” said Zhang Dong Hui, an associate professor of public policy at Renmin University in Beijing.

I hear anecdotal evidence of he same kind from other countries, too. Can anyone provide me with appropriate references/links?

An unbelievable report in The Guardian: ”School colour-codes pupils by ability“, with a photo. Colours of ties are codes of ability streams. In my opinion as a teacher and a parent, this is madness. I cannot believe this is happening in a state funded school.

Pupils at Crown Wood. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

 

The wonderful book by Alexander Zvonkin “Math from Three to Seven: The Story of a Mathematical Circle for Preschoolers”, in the MSRI Mathematical Circles Library series, has been published

http://www.ams.org/bookstore?fn=20&arg1=whatsnew&ikey=MCL-5

Math from Three to Seven: The Story of a Mathematical Circle for Preschoolers (Msri Mathematical Circles Library)

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Math-from-Three-to-Seven/Alexander-Zvonkin/e/9780821868737