Tom Mahoney

119 posts

Tom Mahoney

Tom Mahoney

@MathProfTom

Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Emporia State University. Father, Catholic, mathematician, saxophonist, board gamer.

Emporia, KS Присоединился Mayıs 2015
67 Подписки139 Подписчики
Tom Mahoney
Tom Mahoney@MathProfTom·
@JohnEstesMath Nice work! I love the improvements (both in setup and in presentation) you've come up with. Extra columns *before* the pivot columns seems obvious in hindsight. I added it to my PT Gradebook playlist as the first video: youtube.com/playlist?list=…
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Tom Mahoney
Tom Mahoney@MathProfTom·
@solidangles That's a neat site. I'll play around in it. Also, check out Advent of Code. It's something I look forward to each December.
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Bill Shillito - now at 🦋
Bill Shillito - now at 🦋@solidangles·
So far I'm 7kyu on Python, which I've been doing for a while, and 8kyu on JavaScript, which I'm learning for the first time. (Really want to eventually learn better web dev.)
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Bill Shillito - now at 🦋
Bill Shillito - now at 🦋@solidangles·
Trying out CodeWars to try to get in better practice with coding again ... this is a lot of fun! Anyone else on CodeWars? Any tips for how to make best use of it?
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Tom Mahoney
Tom Mahoney@MathProfTom·
@DrChadWiley @dccmath @RobertTalbert @joshua_r_eyler @siwelwerd In the same vein, asking teachers if they ever had a student pass (or fail) a class that they didn't think really deserved to. Or did they ever fudge numbers to move a student up to a higher letter grade? If trad grading is "objective", those things shouldn't happen, right?
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Robert Talbert
Robert Talbert@RobertTalbert·
I'm teaching Discrete Structures 2 this fall, mostly CS majors. Grading most stuff "pass/fail" but I thought "1/0" would be more appropriate marks. Would that get misinterpreted as points, do you think? Maybe use "True/False" instead?
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Tom Mahoney
Tom Mahoney@MathProfTom·
@solidangles I'm tired of topology discourse. Every argument has holes in it.
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Bill Shillito - now at 🦋
Bill Shillito - now at 🦋@solidangles·
I'm tired of dynamical systems discourse. Any little thing just sets people off wildly.
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Tom Mahoney
Tom Mahoney@MathProfTom·
@louieeckhardt @cdobbins_music Looks like you went back-to-front and I went front-to-back Wordle 210 5/6 ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ 🟩⬜🟨🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Tom Mahoney
Tom Mahoney@MathProfTom·
@sbagley We have weekly 2hr labs for calc2 (I use desmos). In non-lab classes, I start calc2 with integration stuff, but the labs start with taylor polys (only needs derivs; follows nicely from calc1). Ignore conv/div until the non-lab material gets to series. LMK if you want my labs.
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Tom Mahoney
Tom Mahoney@MathProfTom·
@solidangles In calc, I assigned 1-2 (short) hw exercises due each day. Spot-check for completion (no pressure). Students can email a pic before class (no penalty or questions asked if absent). Attendance improved even though this system doesn't "require" attendance.
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Bill Shillito - now at 🦋
Bill Shillito - now at 🦋@solidangles·
And by the way, please don't respond with anything like "bUiLd A cuLTuRe!!!1". I'm looking for implementable practices, not vague platitudes.
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Bill Shillito - now at 🦋
Bill Shillito - now at 🦋@solidangles·
Hey y'all. Asking advice from fellow uni educators. How can I better encourage attendance without resorting to draconian attendance policies? I try to make my classes as interesting and active as possible, but about half my students come to class anymore.
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Tom Mahoney
Tom Mahoney@MathProfTom·
@solidangles Ear decompositions only work when you start with a cycle. 😁
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Tom Mahoney
Tom Mahoney@MathProfTom·
@RobertTalbert I learned it as "dots and bars" from Doug West's book.
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Robert Talbert
Robert Talbert@RobertTalbert·
Discrete math/combinatorics people, we're going to need to rebrand the "stars and bars" counting method. Student today said he Googled it to prep for class, got a page full of Confederate flags! I suggested "stars and stripes" but that seemed cheesy.
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Tom Mahoney
Tom Mahoney@MathProfTom·
@elliottlockwood Using logic is an absolute must. Sincerely, a mathematician. (Although we might be talking about different things 😜)
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Tom Mahoney
Tom Mahoney@MathProfTom·
Yay! I have tenure!
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Tom Mahoney
Tom Mahoney@MathProfTom·
@matthematician @MasteryGrading Example: I have 25 standards, students can pass each twice. Each pass is a "checkmark". Completing at least 90% of daily homework across the whole semester is worth 4 checkmarks that just get thrown into the pool with everything else. They can fill in gaps but aren't required.
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Tom Mahoney
Tom Mahoney@MathProfTom·
@AlexKontorovich I've been using it with great success in grad math courses. Having LaTeX support is great. They're more intrinsically motivated, so I use it more as a carrot than a stick (simplified scoring system; scores visible to students in real-time). Great for finding typos in the text!
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Alex Kontorovich
Alex Kontorovich@AlexKontorovich·
This is a *fascinating* lecture -- has anybody used Perusall and have something to report? I must say I have not been a fan of the "flipped" classroom ideas I've seen (a good lecturer can *inspire* so much better than sitting alone at a screen). But this?? youtu.be/anAp5UIsGCA
YouTube video
YouTube
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Tom Mahoney
Tom Mahoney@MathProfTom·
@solidangles @moodle The next level is saving the comments for each problem in a spreadsheet that you can reuse each year. It gives me an incentive to carefully word feedback to common mistakes knowing that I can reuse it.
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Bill Shillito - now at 🦋
Bill Shillito - now at 🦋@solidangles·
My newest source of ire: writing detailed feedback in a comment to a student on @moodle, hitting "Save and Grade Next", and finding out that it didn't save the comments because I didn't hit "Save Comment" separately and now have to go back and retype it all.🤬
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Tom Mahoney
Tom Mahoney@MathProfTom·
@neil_calkin I saw @_qnlw's example below, and it makes a lot of sense. I had considered Σ(-1)^n/ln(n), but not fixing the denominator for a few terms and going -,-,+,-,-,+,...
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Tom Mahoney
Tom Mahoney@MathProfTom·
I was thinking up conjectures for my Adv. Calc class' exam and stumbled upon one that stumped me. Any ideas? If \sum x_n converges, then there exists some integer m>1 such that \sum (x_n)^m converges.
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