Bill Shillito - now at 🦋

Apparently things get throttled if I mention the name of the 🦋 site. So yeah, I'm there now. Like this if you can actually see it ... and then come join us! Look for "solidangles" there.

I can't promise I'll be active yet — this is a REALLY rough semester and I'm just trying to pass my classes, write my dissertation, and make it across the finish line. But I miss talking math with people, and I hope to do more of that in the future in a non-toxic environment.

Hey everyone, I'm still here. I've been busy as hell with my PhD program (it's the last year!), and I haven't had energy to do much on social media. But I think this election is the impetus I've needed to finally make the jump to bluesky. Find me on there if you'd like!

@howie_hua 36 * 14 = (25 + 11)(25 - 11) = 25^2 - 11^2 = 625 - 121 = 504

It's Mental Math Monday! How many cards are in this box if there are 36 packs and each pack has 14 cards?

So, uh, wow, writing a dissertation prospectus is terrifying.

@LukeSelfwalker Glad you enjoyed it! I really need to get back into making math videos once I finish grad school. 😅

Thank you YouTube algorithm for recommending this amazing video `Putting Algebraic Curves in Perspective` by @solidangles. "A parabola is an ellipse stretched to infinity." wasn't even the most mind blowing statement. Check it out! youtube.com/watch?v=XXzhqS…

For real! 💯 🌐 teachergoals.com

Oh thank god.

@TonyTheLion2500 Some people just like to be jerks on the internet. I was going to give more explanation but really that sums it up. Did you ever get your question answered?

Why do people get mad at me for asking a question they think of as "basic"? This isn't a Q&A platform like math.SE, nobody is under any obligation to answer. If you don't like it, ignore it. I don't have to conform to your idea of "trivial" or "easy".

@Desmos When will this be able to take the nth derivative of a function? Would really help with showing arbitrary Taylor series...

Recursion lets us extend visual patterns like these “triangle numbers”, allowing us to define a function in terms of a previous term. What are you going to make next? Explore the graph: desmos.com/geometry/ablad… Learn more about recursion: help.desmos.com/hc/en-us/artic…

@LoveDYaun NUMBER ONE IN TOKYO

my bday is exactly in ONE WEEK!!!

@the_phyrexian @CubeApril (Also, it took me WAY too long to parse which choice that corresponds to, since ⊃ means superset, not subset…)

@the_phyrexian @CubeApril Arithmetic is a subset of mathematics. An important but extremely small one. 😜

stuck in a four-way #SeriousIssues argument at tonight’s dinner. “math” and “arithmetic” and whether or not one is a subset of the other.

@TonyTheLion2500 @Osk9990 When you refine an existing partition of [a,b], you're subdividing the intervals you already have instead of just re-dividing it haphazardly into more pieces. It makes sure that your approximation of the "true area" keeps getting better (or at least never gets worse).

@Osk9990 Is that what you the refinement is supposed to represent? 🤔 I thought a refinement of a set is supposed to be a set that contains the set that it refines, so it possibly has more elements?

I'm not sure I understand the role of the refinement in the construction of the Riemann Integral. Can someone explain?

@Iilstinky @lilchiva @TonyTheLion2500 I'm not sure that saying this while presenting a GIF that does not in fact demonstrate a refinement of a partition is really sending the message you were intending here.

@LoveDYaun BIG BOSS TO THE TOP SUPER SUPER FLY HIGH

BIG BOSS TECHPARA ROUTINE IN THE BGA!!! TECHPARA IN STEPMANIAX!!!

@NoahNCopeland I haven’t used GameMaker in a loooong time — what’re the details here?

Again I say, it's weird to see GameMaker and its language become more and more like the things it was meant to be an alternative to

@Mathowitz @numericalguy @mpershan The direct instruction fans act like inquiry-based learning is just throwing students in the deep end with zero guidance. The inquiry-based learning fans act like direct instruction is just lecturing for an hour straight with zero interaction. There HAS to be middle ground.

@Mathowitz @numericalguy @mpershan Regarding "I don't think anybody is arguing otherwise" ... I dunno, with all the math ed discussion I've seen on Twitter these days, it's EXTREMELY polarized. Each side caricatures the other's approach, and I've felt somewhat alienated as someone who wants do a balance of both.

I feel like this is obvious, but a main reason why teachers make their own curriculum is because assigned materials are too hard for students. Another is because it's boring for kids to do the same kind of stuff every day. This is apparently debatable?

@Mathowitz @numericalguy @mpershan Example: I just got done taking an Advanced Matrix Analysis course as part of my PhD program. Singular value decomposition didn’t really click until I buckled down, wrote out a 3x3 matrix with actual numbers in it, and went through the calculation.

@Mathowitz @numericalguy @mpershan I think that’s different for each person though. For me the concept often doesn’t make sense until I’ve run through an example a few times and gotten a good computational feel for it. That’s when the concept clicks, and if I’m stuck on the concept I’ll go back to the procedure.