In the Ask Dr. Math service, new volunteers went through a period of training (“internship”), first demonstrating their ability to write effectively about math with some example problems, and then answering actual questions under supervision, discussing their answers with a mentor online before they were actually sent out. Once our reliability was confirmed, we were …
While I was setting up The Math Doctors site a year ago, I ran across the following email I received in 1998 inviting people to become Math Doctors. It illustrates well the ethos of the team: In the fall of 1994 the Math Forum at Swarthmore College (then the Geometry Forum) started an email program …
I previously wrote about finding the range of various kinds of functions. The examples there were relatively easy. A recent question raised the level of difficulty, bringing up some interesting issues.
(An archive question of the week) Last time we looked at a formula for approximating the mode of grouped data, which works well for normal distributions, though I have never seen an actual proof, or a statement of conditions under which it is appropriate. We have also received questions about a much more well-known, and …
The mode of a list of data values is simply the most common value (or values … if any). When data is grouped (binned) as in a histogram, we normally talk only about the modal class (the class, or group, with the greatest frequency), because we don’t know the individual values. But some sources teach …
(A new question of the week) It’s surprising how many questions we get that end up being about problems that are poorly worded or simply wrong. But these can be as illuminating as good problems, by showing ways to catch the error. This is one simple in itself, but will lead us into a common …
Last time we looked at various ways to find tangent lines to a parabola without using calculus. Another standard calculus task is to find the maximum or minimum of a function; this is commonly done in the case of a parabola (quadratic function) using algebra, but can it be done with a cubic function? Yes, …
I always like solving advanced problems with basic methods. For example, many problems that we usually think of as “algebra problems” can be solved by creative thinking without algebra; and some “calculus problems” can be solved using only algebra or geometry. Using simple tools for a big job requires more thought than using “the right …
(A new question of the week) Sometimes a problem that looks complicated turns out to have a simple answer. And sometimes that simple answer turns out to be too simple for its own good. Today’s problem is an example of this.
(An archive question of the week) The indeterminate nature of 0/0, which we looked at last time, is an essential part of the derivative (in calculus): every derivative that exists is a limit of that form! So it is a good idea to think about how these ideas relate.