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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: September 13th, 2023

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  • The big thing is that vectors seem to be the kind of “shoved into the end of the semester if there’s time after testing” from what I’ve seen. Most of the time, even when I work with calculus students they have no idea what a vector is.

    A big thing to is getting them to understand what square roots even really mean. I’ve noticed a lot of students struggle with getting sqrt(x) * sqrt(x) = x, so even just the simple “hey, can you get a negative by taking a number and multiplying by itself?” is often a hurdle cognitively. (A lot of this I suspect has to do with not understanding what multiplication or division really “are” - I usually remediate with the area model)


  • Imaginary numbers are typically introduced in a high school “algebra 2” course in my neck of the woods, like junior year unless you are accelerated or held back. I feel like it’s really common for them to not be taught well - the naming is something that occasionally trips up the teachers.

    The teaching of them is something that really interests me - they’re the kind of thing that triggers the “when am I ever going to use this?”/rants about not learning how to do taxes. You can talk about the relevance to electronics, but DC electronics is already hard enough for most to comprehend.

    I like to connect it to rotation. Show them the pattern of powers of i with physical movement - quarter turns.


  • This is the kind of thing one thinks after injecting quite a bit of THC, but a conspiracy theory I half-believe in is that shit like Left Behind was a plot to mislead people so they wouldn’t recognize him when he showed up.

    So much of what your average white fundie/evangelical Christian believes about eschatology is not really in the Bible. It’s all mostly based on a Bible edition from 1917 plus John Bircher stuff - see the obsession with the United Nations. It can sorta be an anti Catholic church thing too, but fundiengelicals have mostly had a truce with Catholics since they formed their anti abortion coalition in the 70s (in the Left Behind series, the original pope does get raptured, but most media has the pope as either the anti-Christ or an eager collaborator)

    This is how they imagine the end of the world

    The Antichrist is a lefty who promises peace and tolerance and good things, so there’s nothing wrong with building a statue to this great guy, almost as persecuted and powerful as Jesus himself. Global warming is fake, really the sign of the end of the world is litter boxes for furries at school.