Zoom Room 
Jamboard 
Textbook 
Lectures 
Calculator 
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Welcome
Zoom Room
Jamboard
Textbook
Lectures
Calculator
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Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding.
- Kant
Welcome to a fun website stuffed full of resources to help you enjoy math. Here is a very quick tour of the menus.
The very top menu organizes the places I go to elsewhere online when teaching math classes or leading high school math club explorations. The top menu has links to this page, my Zoom room, my online whiteboard, an online textbook, lecture archives, and an online calculator. This is a handy collection of tools, but not the reason you are here.
Next is a row of three small menus that organize this website.
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First are the skill topics. If you wish, hover over the icons to see their titles, or start exploring them immediately.
Foundational math skills are divided into three topics. We start with the art of shapeshifting: everything we can do that changes a single number. Then we look at mad science: everything we can do that involves combining numbers together. Finally we consider justice: doing the same thing to both sides of an equation. After you have learned these math topics your brain will naturally recategorize them as skills about fractions, ratios, percentages, graphing, and measurement. But it is much easier to learn these topics in the order I present them.
The fourth skill topic is typicality: what do we mean by a typical or representative value for a group of measurements, how do different types of averages work, and how likely are to have typical things happen?
The last icon in the skills menu links to a lengthy discussion of study skills.
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Next are the application topics that make math practical in daily life. The first icon in this group leads you to explore math with fun games and playgrounds.
The other three icons in this group are where to learn about health decisions, personal finance decisions, business decisions, and some science stuff. These applications are used in the Lane Community College classes named Math 25, Math 52, and Math 105.
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Last are some resources to help students be successful. Discover what it means to be good at math. Visit our classroom library to explore its books, videos, podcasts, and apps. See resources available at Lane Community College. Look at my class syllabus. Check off your progress with earning achievements.
Have fun exploring the website! Try clicking on things. Use Ctrl-F to search for text.
This section is for my Fall term students taking Math 52.
For the sake of simplicity we will try to follow the official textbook one chapter per week. This textbook has lots of clearly explained example problems and good homework problems.
We will use this website to fill in what the textbook lacks: group activities, interesting readings, extension topics, and help with how to picture and think about most of the math topics.
This week, in addition to getting introduced to each other and to the course, we discuss the first textbook chapter, Review of Fractions.
Here are links to our Monday class jamboard, and the video on Zoom and YouTube:
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How do this week's textbook sections fit with the website topics?
This Week's To Do List
1. Smile. Attend the Zoom sessions with your camera on as much as possible. If you are ever absent, watch the archived videos of the lessons, ask questions, and check in by either using office hours or submitting a video of you doing that math work taught that class.
2. Connect. Connect with classmates outside of class by attending a study group.
3. Study. Read our textbook and website. Review and improve your notes. Maybe watch the suggested videos. Practice with even-numbered textbook problems and randomly generated website exercises.
4. Reflect. Read the first section of the study skills page about time management.
5. Assess. Do as much of the homework as you need, and turn in all the graded work.
6. Explore. Explore this website.
7. Celebrate. Tell your instructor about any achievements you have completed, so those get checked off.
Homework
Textbook §1.1 (page 24) # 1 to 65 every other odd
Textbook §1.2 (page 33) # 67 to 105 odd
Textbook §1.3 (page 42) # 107 to 141 odd
Graded Work
Neatly write step-by-step answers for textbook §1.1 # 31, 41, 51, §1.2 # 69, 75, 79, 105, and §1.3 # 133, 135, 141. E-mail a photograph of your paper.
Write a start of term reflection.
Share in class what you learned from Dr. Chu's videos about studying.
Instructor's notes: the textbook never teaches reducing, and the website could use pictures for representational fluency of fractions and mixed numbers.
This week, in addition to getting introduced to each other and to the course, we discuss the first textbook chapter, Decimal Review.
Here are links to our Monday class jamboard, and the video on Zoom and YouTube:
| (coming soon) |
How do this week's textbook sections fit with the website topics?
This Week's To Do List
1. Smile. Attend the Zoom sessions with your camera on as much as possible. If you are ever absent, watch the archived videos of the lessons, ask questions, and check in by either using office hours or submitting a video of you doing that math work taught that class.
2. Connect. Connect with classmates outside of class by attending a study group.
3. Study. Read our textbook and website. Review and improve your notes. Maybe watch the suggested videos. Practice with even-numbered textbook problems and randomly generated website exercises.
4. Reflect. Read the first section of the study skills page about doings.
5. Assess. Do as much of the homework as you need, and turn in all the graded work.
6. Explore. Explore this website.
7. Celebrate. Tell your instructor about any achievements you have completed, so those get checked off.
Homework
Textbook §2.1 (page 49) # 1 to 29 odd
Textbook §2.2 (page 52) # 31 to 51 odd
Textbook §2.3 (page 56) # 53 to 61 odd
Textbook §2.4 (page 67) # 63 to 145 odd
Graded Work
Neatly write step-by-step answers for textbook §2.1 # 19, 29, §2.2 # 51, §2.3 # 59, 61, and §2.4 # 71, 75, 87, 111, 129. E-mail a photograph of your paper.
Do the website's ten exercises for rounding and e-mail the code at the bottom of the turn-in page.
Do the website's ten exercises for fraction format and e-mail the code at the bottom of the turn-in page.
Instructor's notes: the textbook does not use decimal point scoots until section 6.4 with metric unit conversions, and the website lacks writing ratios that include a variable amount.
(More weekly foldouts will be here later in the term.)
I like to think of mathematicians as forming a nation of our own without distinctions of geographical origin, race, creed, sex, age or even time...all dedicated to the most beautiful of the arts and sciences.
- Julia Robinson
The acronym OER stands for Open Educational Resources. Different OER materials have different rules for how they may be shared, copied, or modified.
I am slightly protective of my explanations of math concepts. These explanations are written for a specific audience. It is easy for a paraphrase to unknowingly explain math concepts badly. In some places my written explanations unexplicitly take into consideration my accompanying lecture style. For those reasons, I ask that other educators please contact me before modifying my math concept explanations. However, you may share or copy my math concept explanations verbatim as much as you wish if you provide attribution with a mention of this website.
This website uses some public domain images. For example, the this page has images of a heart-shaped library shelf and a Lego minifig.
Everything else (all my diagrams, math problems, study tips, etc.) uses the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. This means you cannot use my work to earn money, but otherwise you may share, copy, or modify that stuff without asking permission if you provide attribution with a mention of this website.
I am always excited to hear by e-mail how my work is helping other educators!
Are looking for the missing 105 stuff or Zoom polls?