Category Archives: Teaching

The Role of Generalization in Advanced Mathematical Thinking

Posted on August 21, 2016 by Mohammed Kaabar

Generalization and abstraction both play an important role in the minds of mathematics students as they study higher-level concepts. In the second chapter of the Springer book Advanced Mathematical Thinking, Tommy Dreyfus defines generalization as the derivation or induction from something particular to something … Continue reading →

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Daily Quizzes: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly—Part 1

Posted on May 30, 2016 by Sarah K. Salmon

This past semester, I decided to do something crazy—I gave my students a quiz (nearly) every day of class. You can imagine that my students weren’t nearly as excited as I was about this plan. In case you’re looking for … Continue reading →

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Eigenightmares, Dancing Stick Figures, and the Advantages of a Spiral Approach to Pedagogy

Posted on April 6, 2016 by Matthew Simonson

For my next installment on innovative teaching techniques, I’d like to dredge another demon that haunted my nights long ago—EIGENVECTORS!  Normally, eigenvectors are introduced in the waning days of a first-year linear algebra course, when students’ minds are already saturated … Continue reading →

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Getting Students Used to Abstract Concepts

Posted on April 2, 2016 by Mohammed Kaabar

According to my experience teaching limits in Calculus for Life Scientists, it is really difficult for students to understand limits because they do not have the required knowledge on which to build the concept. I have noticed that even if they can handle and … Continue reading →

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Hookups, Dating, and Markov Chains: Teaching Matrices so that Your Students Won’t Hate Them, Part III

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Matthew Simonson

Having taught your students how to visualize matrix multiplication and why performing this bizarre dance of arithmetic could help make society a better place, the next logical step might be to raise a matrix to a power, say, to help your … Continue reading →

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