"This is George. He lived with his friend, the man with the yellow hat. He was a good little monkey and always very curious.

This is how most of my favourite stories start. I loved Curious George when I was a little girl, and even more when I grew up. My friends always knew what to get me... that anything "Curious George" themed would please me. In fact, for one Christmas I remember getting "Curious George" themed candles, and of course I own all the books, all the stories, and even the movie.

When I had kids of my own, it was only a matter of time before I made them fall in love with Curious George as much as I had. That is the only cartoon I would let them watch in the morning, I would read them the ingenious stories every night, and they fell in love with the "good little monkey" that I loved all these years.

And then today, I was talking to my oldest son Jakub. He'll be five years old in a few weeks. We were talking about differences in similar animals. For instance,

"What is the difference between a cheetah and a jaguar?"

1. Take an eight by eight grid (with 64 squares).

2. Fill it randomly with digits 1 through 8.

3. Now start at any number on the left most column.

4. Move that many spaces down your grid (going up to the top of the next column if you run out of space).

5. Whatever number you land on, take that many steps down the grid, moving to the top of the next column if you run out of space, and continue.

6. Continue this procedure, until you run out of room on the whole grid.

7. Mark the last spot you landed on.

8. Start again with a new number on the left most column of your grid. Redo the whole procedure.

9. Try again, starting with yet another number on the left most column of the grid. And again. And again.

9. What happened?

I tried this cool little experiment, and to my amazement, at the end, I always landed on the same square (the three with the red check mark) no matter where I started on the most left column. Here is my grid:

The "Math Teachers at Play" Carnival is on. My post on subtraction is on it. Check it out.

Now I don't have to leave my desk at home in Montreal to listen to a lecture by a mathematics MIT professor, or an economics Yale prof. I don't even have to sign up for the course. I just go to Academic Earth and just watch the whole lecture series as if I was watching You Tube.

This is exactly why the internet is awesome.

If I don't like my prof at McGill or Concordia, I can just learn it from the prof at another university - probably more qualified than my prof anyway.

If I miss a class / concept in my regular course, I can go and learn it online, as if I didn't miss a beat.

If I am a gifted high school student of mathematics, and I already got through all the material from high school by the time I reach grade 11, why not get a head start on college / university math by going to Academic Earth and learning a whole course on linear algebra, just as if I was one of the university students.

A while back I was in a situation where I had to teach evolution to some grade nine students. I am more of the physical science/math teacher, and biology is not my cup of tea.

In physics, there are also unproven "theories" that we follow. In fact, all of Newtonian physics is pretty much "false" and yet we teach it all the time as fundamental physics. Light is both a wave and a particle... how can that ever be possible? Either it can travel through objects (like a wave / energy) or it is stopped by objects (like a particle)? For some reason, the physical theories don't affect people in the same emotional way as the theory of evolution. We have a way of dealing with the physics theories on a logic / thinking level. No religion is offended (although ~400 years ago, Copernicus' theory of planetary motion around the sun was dissputed by the Catholic church). Nobody's extreme beliefs come under fire with all these silly physics theories.

I came across this awesome visualization of what 1 trillion dollars would look like. Pretty cool! Check it out:

What does one TRILLION dollars look like?

In the recent movie: "21" a probability puzzle is presented:

A quiz show contestant is lead to a room with three doors. Behind one of them there's an expensive sports car; behind the other two there's a goat.

The candidate chooses one of the doors. But it is not opened; the host (who knows the location of the sports car) opens one of the other doors instead and shows a goat. The rules of the game, which are known to all participants, require the host to do this irrespective of the candidate's initial choice.

The candidate is now asked if he wants to stick with the door he chose originally or if he prefers to switch to the other remaining closed door. His goal is the sports car, of course!

The question now is:

* Is the candidate better off if he sticks with his original choice,
* are his chances better if he switches, or
* does it not matter whether he switches or not?

Some students came up to me and asked me about it in class the other day, and we had a fun discussion about it. Of course, I heard about the logic problem long before the movie came out. I heard about it in one of my logic classes back at university. I really should see that movie "21".

Here is the solution and explanation in a nice little movie (I guess it's called the Monty Hall Riddle):

I feel so happy when I realize how many students that I taught have done so much good in life, are so accomplished. I've written about some of my students earlier, and I think I'll make a post every so often about another one, because lots of them have done so so much. Here is a student that goes above and beyond every dream child. I love Joanne, and I hope she continues on her quest.

I taught her Math and Science in grade 6 and 7 and she was awesome back then too. We kept in contact throughout the last few years and I just wanted to celebrate her great achievement. I'm sure I didn't play too much of a role in her endevours, but I am honoured to know her, someone so full of passion, full of ideas.

She started an organization to empower girls, called Ophelia's Voice. Read the article from the Edmonton Journal to find out more...

When Joanne Cave was 12, she read a book that scared her.

Reviving Ophelia, a 1994 bestseller, argues that girls come of age in a "girl-poisoning culture" that forces them to stay within a narrow definition of female or risk being shunned. It's named for the character in Shakespeare's Hamlet who drowns herself.

This winter has been really bad for me and my family (and all the kids at school and in my workshops) for illness. It's one cold after another, a flu, then the next then something else. For the last two months our weekends are spent at home recuperating, sleeping extra, going to doctors etc.

So when I found this free game online about infecting people with a sneeze, I was really pleased at the reality of it.

Basically, you can sneeze once per level and try to infect as many people as you can... each person infected also has one sneeze, etc. The object of the game is to infect a certain percentage of the population in the room/environment.

What a good concept. Trt it out for yourself. And remember it when you go out and sneeze on your friends...SNEEZE

Are students really all that different “Now” than they were “Before”? It is a very common proclamation that young people now have no respect, no motivation, and no problem solving ability. But really, I heard this for a while now, including when I was in school. And I still hear it now. Is each generation getting worse and worse, or do we just have that perception, that our generation was better somehow, and the generation before us, even more?