Steve Hare

Too many kids fall behind during math lessons because they don't know their math facts. Don't let this happen to your child this year. Send them to FactFreaks, the website I created to get my students up to speed with all 400 basic facts. It only takes a minute to play, they can learn their facts from scratch with the new Basic Training feature, and best of all, it's 100% free, no ads. Start giving your kid an edge in math class right now!

Fossil Friday: "Bandy About" The verb 'bandy' once referred to striking or throwing a ball back and forth in a game. Bandy then became used figuratively to illustrate the informal discussion of ideas being 'tossed around' like a ball. Today, bandy is a fossil word, meaning it's almost never used except in this one exact phrase, bandy about. So if you aren't "bandying about", you aren't bandying at all. The daily puzzle at Wordcels.com involves placing 15 words like 'bandy' and 'about' in the right order to form two-word phrases across the game board. Intrigued? Give it a whirl today. #Wordcels

nowhere fast As a parent do you ever feel like you are doing a lot just to keep the wheels on the bus? Like you are working very hard but not making progress? That's what we call going "nowhere fast". This phrase perfectly captures the fruitless frenzy of a situation where action doesn't lead to advancement. In a similar vein, the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, tells Alice, "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place".  16 two-word phrases like "nowhere fast" jumbled into a puzzle everyday at Wordcels.com. #Wordcels

Wordle is getting pretty stale at this point. Try this one, an actual new concept in word games.

@i_Drohi @LamsonNguyen15 @teachthemx3 @justinskycak Typo. It's youteachyou.org.

@LamsonNguyen15 @teachthemx3 @justinskycak url not found

Few people understand the kinds of opportunities that get unlocked when a student learns advanced math ahead of time. For instance, a former student, Matteo, leveraged his outsized math/coding chops to – as a high schooler – conduct research that “revealed 1.5 million previously unknown objects in space, broadened the potential of a NASA mission” (not hyperbole, a direct quote from Caltech’s website). He also published his results solo-author in The Astronomical Journal and won 1st place ($250,000) in last year’s Regeneron Science Talent Search. The head of NASA just asked him to apply, with a fighter jet ride as a signing bonus. And this is still just the beginning – I can’t wait to see where his interests, skills, creativity, and work ethic take him in college and beyond. But here’s the thing that’s important to understand: this kind of story won’t play out for students who are marching through the standard curriculum. Not even to students whose skills are a year or two ahead. If you want to do hardcore university-level quantitative research, you need hardcore university-level quantitative skills. You need it for the work itself, and you also need it to land a quality mentor who provides high-level guidance to keep you working in the right direction. If you want far outsized results ahead of time, you need far outsized skills ahead of time. Matteo and other Math Academy students learned -- all of high school math (Prealgebra / Algebra I / Geometry / Algebra II / Precalculus) in 6th and 7th grade, -- AP Calculus BC in 8th grade, and -- plenty of multivariable calculus / linear algebra / differential equations in 9th grade. With such solid and comprehensive math foundations, they came into 10th grade ready for some serious quantitative coding. So in addition to continuing down the math-proper track (real analysis, abstract algebra, etc.), we were also able to offer these students a quantitative CS course sequence where we scaffolded them up to doing masters/PhD-level coursework by 12th grade (reproducing academic research papers in artificial intelligence, building everything from scratch in Python). We called this the “Eurisko” program. Matteo joined Eurisko as a 10th grader, during the last year it was offered, and worked hard to complete almost all 2-3 years’ worth of assignments in a single year. (Eurisko ended when I relocated; nobody else in the district had the requisite knowledge to teach it.) That summer, he participated in a research internship/mentorship program at Caltech, which was meant to be a brief 6-week taste of research, but he was skilled and driven enough to knock it out of the park, stay on afterwards, and achieve some serious results. This is exactly the position that we were trying to put students in with the Eurisko program – get them to a point of skill that they can capitalize on some math/coding-related opportunity and turn it into a chain reaction of fortunate events. And it’s been so great to witness some of these chain reactions get underway. But the best part is that we’re gradually able to do more and more of this at scale. We’re taking everything we’ve learned from doing math/coding talent development manually, and building it into our online system, to make it available to the whole world. We’ve already built a pipeline from 4th grade through core undergrad math courses, and we’re working to extend that pipeline further in both directions, eventually spanning everything from the simplest arithmetic to the entirety of an undergrad math major, the Eurisko program, and more. I can’t wait to hear more of these amazing stories.

@rodjnaquin Leo Kottke's 6 and 12 String Guitar is roughly in the same ballpark.

@sharemath For real! Others in this realm you appreciate ?

Aerial Boundaries - Album by Michael Hedges | Spotify open.spotify.com/album/2hgrTinA…

@jlerner I have no idea! I'll ask our programmer!

@sharemath Not sure how a student made this happen.

@jlerner We may do this at some point, when we have the time and means to do so. It's a good idea!

@sharemath How FactFreaks Jr.? Beginners might need to practice just x + 0/1 or + 0/1/2, etc. Or multiplication limited to x * 0/1 or *0/1/2/10, etc.

@PhillipJCoulson @clever I'm considering it now!

Hey @sharemath, have you considered putting Fact Freaks on @clever? We already use it for so many things, and it's better than Xtra Math (which times the kids out if they take too long and frustrates them). I asked Grok what it would take to add it, if you were wondering. x.com/i/grok/share/d…

@jlerner Excellent!

@sharemath Looks good!

@sharemath Is there a key that is equivalent to tapping the "impossible" on-screen button? I tried the "delete" and "backspace" keys, but neither worked on Mac.

@LamsonNguyen15 I've seen it a million times. When the stuff seems easy, stupid mistakes follow. (Speaking about myself mostly, of course.) You are precisely where you should be, my friend. So good to hear!

Day 41: Alg 2 was about complex arithmetic. The hard part is avoiding easy mistakes. Geo had a tricky problem where you had to pick a point to be a perp bisector instead of the midpoint. Alg 1 is taking an exam today/tomorrow. Had my first ever 504 meeting. Never a dull day here!

@PhillipJCoulson The Dude abides! So good to hear, Phil!

Last week I had a frustrating conversation with a co-teacher. Yesterday I told another co-teacher about @sharemath's Fact Freaks website. When I saw her today, she said that she's already had all her students create accounts! Bright spot in my week and it's only Tuesday.

@jlerner I'll ask the programmer and get back to you. It's probably a bug. I'm pretty sure backspace is supposed to do it.

How can you make sure your child masters basic math regardless of the teacher they happened to get this year? And how can you do it without pricey tech or tutoring, and without having to do the heavy lifting yourself? See YouTeachYou.org and FactFreaks.com!

@LamsonNguyen15 It's exciting! There are all kinds of possibilities once we devote ourselves to active and accurate model construction at the level of the individual student, and provide each one with precisely what they need to do that!

@sharemath Wow, I never thought that Friston’s work on the “free energy principle” would apply to education! I like how the optimal range for error rate that maximizes learning mirrors how we grade relative to ZPD at Telra, where the Goldilocks zone is a 10 to 25% error rate.

I implore educators to look into Predictive Processing, the modern learning theory related to how AI learns. Not only does it provide insight into how individual students learn; it describes what they need to do so. It could change everything.

@A_Math_Teacher So good to hear, Kelly! Thanks for letting me know. Looking forward to the updates!

@PsyDocCindy See YouTeachYou.org. I'm in the process of creating this curriculum, but I use it with my students as well. It's better because it gives students an example for everything, and instant feedback too.

Math curriculum question. My kids’ school uses enVisionMATH. I have some issues with it. What do you use and why is it better? (Preparing for me email to the board. Prayers accepted in lieu of advice.)

Here's a good overview, and I also recommend Andy Clark's book The Experience Machine and Anil Seth's Being You. cogscisci.wordpress.com/2024/04/22/are…

@sharemath What's the best resource to start with?