Week Three Notes
Jan. 26th, 2013 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellow1. Thursday, in my linear algebra course, I finished the current chapter with about fifteen minutes to go. The next chapter is on determinants, which most of them have encountered before, so I decided to give them a little warmup by talking about what determinants are - not how to compute them or what they can be used for, but what they are. (They measure the factor by which a matrix changes sizes - lengths, areas, volumes, etc., as appropriate - with the sign indicating whether the matrix preserves or reverses orientation.) As I said this, one of the students raised a hand. "Is that like Jacobians?" I bounced on my toes and pointed with both hands: "Yes! Yes! That's why Jacobians work!" (He's one of the sharper ones; earlier, I was walking them through a computation, firing questions at every step, and he was the one who answered most of the time. I love having a student who processes on the fly and sees connections I haven't made explicit.)
2. The student whom I overheard the other day came by my office with some questions that same night. Apparently what I'm "legendary" for is the fact that I almost never lecture from notes - I just get up and start talking. (This has its drawbacks, but I've been doing it that way for more than twenty-five years, and I'm not likely to change.) That, and my winter hair and beard....
3. Our conversation also brought something else to my attention. This university is the primary training center for schoolteachers in this corner of the state, and it hit me that, given my longevity here, pretty much every high school math teacher in the area took at least two classes from me. That's... a sobering thought.
2. The student whom I overheard the other day came by my office with some questions that same night. Apparently what I'm "legendary" for is the fact that I almost never lecture from notes - I just get up and start talking. (This has its drawbacks, but I've been doing it that way for more than twenty-five years, and I'm not likely to change.) That, and my winter hair and beard....
3. Our conversation also brought something else to my attention. This university is the primary training center for schoolteachers in this corner of the state, and it hit me that, given my longevity here, pretty much every high school math teacher in the area took at least two classes from me. That's... a sobering thought.
