Tuesday, March 9, 2010

5th Six-Wks Assignments

3-1-10 thru 3-12-10
Section 8-3 Text book pg. 461/#14-28 all
Quiz- Section 8-3
Section 8-4 Wk-sheet/Study guide/ 1-12 both sides
Quiz- Section 8-4
Section 8-3 Wk-sheet/Horizontal Asymptotes/ 1-9 all
Test- ACP Review Pkt

Almost Pi Day!
3-12-10

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

From Fish to Infinity / NY Times

Steven Strogatz is a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University.
He is the author, most recently, of “The Calculus of Friendship,” the story of his 30-year correspondence with his high school calculus teacher. In this series, which appears every Monday, he takes readers from the basics of math to the baffling.
NYTimes
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/from-fish-to-infinity/?hp

Where exactly do numbers come from? Did humanity invent them? Or discover them?
A further subtlety is that numbers (and all mathematical ideas, for that matter) have lives of their own. We can’t control them. Even though they exist in our minds, once we decide what we mean by them we have no say in how they behave. They obey certain laws and have certain properties, personalities, and ways of combining with one another, and there’s nothing we can do about it except watch and try to understand. In that sense they are eerily reminiscent of atoms and stars, the things of this world, which are likewise subject to laws beyond our control … except that those things exist outside our heads....