My Oldest Feedly "Saved for Later" Post

So I was curious to know what the oldest "Saved for Later" post was in my Feedly account. Even though it had nothing to do with math, I still looked at it and went "wow, that's something I've never noticed". The post is from The Daily What and features a couple scenes from Back to the Future and is from 1,508 days ago. I think the image below says it all.

Wow, Has It Really Been Over 3 Years...

Tonight, I found myself with a little extra time so I figured I would look back at the old blogs that I created back in the days. With the summer half way over there's still a lot I would like to accomplish. In the coming weeks and months, I am going to attempt to post some of these things here. Some will be math and education related and others will not. One of the things that I would like to do is to clean out my "Saved for Later" folder in Feedly, as I have a lot of stuff saved in here that I have not gone through, but would like to use in my life and in my classroom.

Thanks for reading.

$1 Store

This week was my first week back after taking paternity leave. When I got back I was surprised to see a room that was decorated/trashed (in a friendly way...nothing broken). One thing about my room that went unnoticed until my last block of the day was this congratulations sign.

Flabbergasted by Final Exams

It's the end of the year and I'm currently grading final exams. I have a love / hate relationship for wrong answers that have made me laugh. The one that I just read goes like this:

Q) Histograms and Pareto charts are both bar charts. What is the significant difference between the two?


A) Histograms come from data collected in the past.

While I'm sure this is true, it's not quite what I am looking for. I think he saw the Hist part and assumed that it was like the Hist in History.

Another one that made me chuckle was the following:

Q) Distinguish between qualitative and quantitative data. Give and example of each.

A) Qualitive data is of great info and quality while quantive has more data then qualitive because there is quantity.

An Effective Blog Post (Challenge #2)

For Challenge #2, I have decided to pick the topic which states 1.Provide a link to an effective post from a blog you have found (preferably not a post you have written). What is it about this post that makes it effective? What characteristics do effective posts share?

One blog that I regularly read is the Math Teacher Mambo, since the posts are usually helpful and she writes in such a way that it is easy to follow. The post that I am evaluating for this challenge is Inspiring Words of Study Wisdom.

The reason that I think this post is effective is because it's to the point, yet concise. There's not a lot to read, which makes reading her posts not time consuming or mundane. I also like how her posts are bulleted and well organized. By posting like this, the reader is able to see the main points of discussion, since everything is organized.

10 Things You Should Know About Blogging (Binary Edition)

In this post I will give my 10 Thing You Should Know About Blogging. Of course, before you start reading this you should know that since this is the last week of the quarter and things are a bit busy, I decided to regard 10 in binary form. So Here We Go!!! 

1) Get personal, but not too personal. You want to be able to tell stories and share your experiences, but you got to be careful. Whenever something is written online, it is important to ask yourself two questions: "Will people know that it was me (John Doe) who wrote this?" and "Can the information hurt me in any way?". A friend of mine started his teaching career and decided to record his experience in a blog. Unfortunately, within his first few posts he wrote about an anger issue that he has dealt with his entire life and how he is taking steps to overcome this issue. What he didn't account for was that one of his student's parents would be reading his blog. To make a long story short, the parent felt their child was endangered by being in the presence of the teacher, the principal stepped in and removed him from his position, the union stepped in and the issue remains unresolved, while the teacher has no class to teach.

10) Use Google Reader. The best way to get to know other blogs and what you like and don't like, is by looking at what other people have to say. This can be tough if all you have to use are hyperlinks, as they don't keep you informed as to when new posts are added, and they don't provide a quick link to these sources in one convenient location. I believe that writing posts is important to becoming a successful blogger, but I also feel that it is just as important to read what others have to say and make comments and ask questions to the posts that interest you.

If you have no idea why I skipped from 1 to 10, then you might want to check the following link on binary numbers.

What's That You Say?...

So, apparently this isn't anything new, but it's new to me. One of my classes was talking about this annoying sound that they could hear, but adults can't. I was a little hesitant to believe my class, for I didn't feel like being the butt of a practical joke this morning. So when one of the students played the noise on his phone and everybody could hear it but me, I began to think that this may have been a pre-planned routine to mess with me.

As a skeptic, I of course went online to see if I could find any information about this phenomenon. As I typed 'high pitched sound adults can't hear' into Google, I came across a news report from CBS News. The article was written on June 12, 2006 and it includes a sample of the sound. To test whether or not I was being lied to, I decided to turn up my computer speakers and play the sound. Once again, I couldn't hear it; but as soon as I turned it on I got people complaining for the sound to be turned off. The cool thing about it was that they thought it was coming from the kid's phone that previously played it, which meant that even though they could hear it, they couldn't track the source of the sound.

As a math enthusiast (math teacher) I would like to see if there is a cut-off point in age for those that can hear the sound and those that cannot. I also wonder, if I were to have listened to this sound when it was released on June 12, 2006, would I have been able to hear the sound then?