Joseph Martinez
Discusses author's view of word problems in an Algebra class and describes an imaginative context with a thinking and writing exercise he developed for classroom use.
David Buhl
A classroom inquiry into expressing pi as the limit of a sequence of different ratios using relationships among coins and the radius of an inscribed circle.
Matthew Whitney
A lesson using a graphing calculator and the "birthday problem" to stimulate student interest in probability.
Rheta Rubenstein, Denisse Thompson
Attempts to sensitize teachers to challenges students have with mathematical symbols, and suggests instructional strategies that can reduce student difficulties.
Charles Emenaker
A group project that involves geometry and falls into an area of mathematics known as operations research.
Gerald Gannon, Mario Martelli
Presents a solution to the three-sailors-and-the-bananas problem and attempts a generalization using an idea drawn from the branch of mathematics called "discrete dynamical systems."
Thomas Shilgalis, Carol Benson
A mathematical look at the center-of-mass concept.
Patricia Allaire, Robert Bradley
Historical solutions to quadratics problems that do not rely on symbolic manipulation.
Peter Oliver
A brief biography of Pierre Varignon (1654–1722), French academician of the era of Newton and Liebniz, who furnished the first rigorous proof of the Parallelogram Theorem.