Thursday, April 22, 2010

Turtle Geometry

I just stumbled across Bill Kendrick's WEB TURTLE - A Java-Free drawing program on the web!
In my early days of computing, with my trusty Apple II+, I had a LOGO software package that I loved. This is very similar to what I remember, with the advantage that it is free! Do take a look and explore the examples and commands.

Here's what the turtle drew in response to the set of commands I gave:


If you are interested in more on turtle geometry, try this:

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Summer 2010 opportunities for mathemically gifted students

Summer Program Catalogs, Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth



SWIM 2010   Women in Mathematics Summer Workshop, Princeton



Partial Home Schooling

One of the issues that frequently comes up in discussions with parents who call or attend my presentations at CTD is home schooling. I "partially home schooled" one of my gifted students when he was in sixth grade and wanted to learn plane geometry. His school recognized that his needs in math were not being met at school, so he was permitted to leave during the school day to come to my home for math. (This was about five years ago, so I don't remember whether we did this once or twice a week, but it was never more than twice a week.) He was able to get his other subjects at school and maintain a full complement of after-school activities. Of course, when he got to the high school, they made him jump through hoops in order NOT to have to repeat the course, but that's another story. The bottom line was that he did not take geometry in high school.


In the elementary grades, teachers and schools tend to be more willing to acknowledge that a student's needs are beyond them, and to let parents take their child out of school for part of the weekly schedule, either to homeschool the student themselves or to hire someone (like me) to mentor their child in mathematics. There is typically less flexibility on the part of the schools in grades 6-12, where many schools take the position that offering algebra in grade 8 (or, rarely, in grade 7) solves the "problem." In my opinion, it usually does NOT.

For a fuller explanation of partial home schooling, check out this article by Deborah Ruf:


I think this is a viable option for children who are particularly gifted in one subject matter area. The children can get what they need in math, for example, from someone with the expertise to provide appropriately challenging content without sacrificing all the social advantages to staying in school for most of the day. The cons include extra driving and the expense, which usually must be handled by the parents.

Puzzle Pages


Saturday, April 10, 2010

Competitions

Participating in math competitions can be a terrific experience for gifted students. Many mathematically gifted students have been accelerated in math; a student with a couple of years of high school math can be a huge asset to a middle school math team, even if he/she has never been in a math class with any of his/her teammates. It adds a social element to doing math (some of the problem solving is done by teams rather by individuals), and, for some gifted students who are not also gifted athletes, this may be the only opportunity to be on a TEAM.

     An excellent author for appropriate books is George Lenchner.










 Note that there are books with Problem of the Week formats (NOT math workbooks!).
 This is a good one: 
    







  The handbooks from past years can be useful for preparing to compete, and contain some interesting problems.

  There are many resources for problems from past ARML contests:
   









   












   There are books containing problems from past exams.








This is the "big time!" So, naturally, there are a host of available resources for students competing at the very highest levels. Here are links to a sample of international math olympiad problem books.

2001

2002

2003












2005











Multiyear problem sets:
















International Contest Problems

 Number theory is a favorite topic.
















I think two of the best books for high school competition prep, and for deeper understanding of mathematical topics than high school classes typically provide are these:

The Art of Problem Solving Volume 1 

and










The Art of Problem Solving Voume 2.