(An archive question of the week) Here’s a little problem with some big lessons for problem solving. Not enough equations? This question is from Kenanga in 2017, not long before the Ask Dr. Math service stopped taking questions: Insufficient Information In Question Given A + B + C = 1 B + C + D …
(An archive question of the week) When I heard Thursday that the great mathematician John Conway had died (see the New York Times obituary here), I recalled not only his books I have read, but his involvement in Ask Dr. Math‘s early days. In addition to a couple dozen quotes from him, there were several …
(An archive question of the week) I’m in the middle of discussing the Law of Sines and the Law of Cosines, and in searching for questions about them, I ran across one that stands by itself. A student asks his teacher why his method without trig doesn’t work, and gets three answers from us. They …
(An archive question of the week) While gathering answers to questions about volume and surface area formulas, I ran across this question that applies to all of them: Given all the approximations and assumptions we make in the derivations we show (without calculus), how can we claim that the resulting formula is exact? Or can …
(An archive question of the week) Last week we looked at a recent question that touched on the idea of the derivative as a rate of change. Let’s look at a long discussion from a few years ago digging into what that means within calculus. Instantaneous rate, or rate per inch? Here’s the question, from …
(An archive question of the week) We’ve been looking at some issues involving frequency distributions and the classes used in them. Let’s look at a related concept with some similar issues, namely the cumulative distribution function (CDF), also called an ogive (more on that name at the end of the post!). What is an ogive? …
(An archive problem of the week) Last time we looked at the subtle distinction between the order of operations, which defines the meaning of an expression, and properties that allow us to do something other than what an expression literally says. Here I want to look at one longer discussion that brings out these issues …
Order of Operations: Fractions, Evaluating, and Simplifying Read More »
(An archive question of the week) Last time we looked at some details that are rarely mentioned in stating the conventions for interpreting algebraic expressions. I couldn’t fit a discussion of the most complicated case: trigonometric functions, which when written without parentheses, as they traditionally have been, can raise several issues. (Much of the same …
(An archive question of the week) I’m going to do something unusual, and post a discussion that was never archived. I ran across it while searching for the original of an archived discussion to check something, and this one stood out as worth posting around the start of the school year. It’s a question from …
(An archive question of the week) While I’m showing some recent explanations of basic trigonometry techniques, this is a good time to look at an even more basic explanation of the essentials of the subject for a beginner. Right triangle trigonometry Here is the question, from 2001: Trigonometry in a Nutshell I’m in 8th grade …