Tom Mahoney

@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=…

@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.

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.)

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?

@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?

@dccmath @RobertTalbert @joshua_r_eyler I'm partial to those hypothetical examples of students who turn in different amounts of work of different quality but still end up with the same average. Or, even better, the real graphs that @siwelwerd brought to MathFest some years back.

@RobertTalbert For my standards-based courses, I use ✔ and ✖

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?

@solidangles I'm tired of topology discourse. Every argument has holes in it.

I'm tired of dynamical systems discourse. Any little thing just sets people off wildly.

@louieeckhardt @cdobbins_music Looks like you went back-to-front and I went front-to-back Wordle 210 5/6 ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ 🟩⬜🟨🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

@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.

@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.

And by the way, please don't respond with anything like "bUiLd A cuLTuRe!!!1". I'm looking for implementable practices, not vague platitudes.

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.

@solidangles Ear decompositions only work when you start with a cycle. 😁

@MathProfTom I actually almost spit out my drink. 😂

Me on my graph My professor's theory homework: feedback:

@RobertTalbert I learned it as "dots and bars" from Doug West's book.

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.

@elliottlockwood Using logic is an absolute must. Sincerely, a mathematician. (Although we might be talking about different things 😜)

@cdobbins_music You too!

Yay! I have tenure!

@sbagley @SouthBaySharona @StevenXClontz @katemath @matthematician @MasteryGrading I *really* want to get a Canvas gradebook to be clear, but I have yet to get something as clear as using mail merge in Word to send out something like this.

@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.

@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!

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

@matthematician I use a mixture of fill-in-the-blank and using "☆" as a wildcard to be selected later. So far, I've been happy with the results. (Example video: youtu.be/HDmFE49fLDs?t=…)

@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.

@MathProfTom @moodle This worked much better. Thank you!

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.🤬

@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 -,-,+,-,-,+,...

@MathProfTom I think that I can construct an example....

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.