Week 5

Drawing of a Mobius strip by MC Escher

Students are forging ahead with Al-Jabr this week! We are planning to squeeze in some work with 'grouping symbols' (ie brackets) and learn how to e-x-p-a-n-d an al-jabr expression:

Example: expand 2 x (m + n) - Solution: simple! everything inside the brackets is multiplied by 2, so we get 2 x m + 2 x n = 2m + 2n

And then we will reverse the process, and become confident in taking out common parts of expressions (aka 'factorisation')

Example: factorise 24 + 6q Solution: find something that divides into both parts - in this case '6' - and take it outside some brackets. This leaves two 'factors' : 6 x (4 + p) - which is the reverse of how we expanded an expression above.

Click here for the next Hammer Maths Assignment
which is due Tue March 13th (first Tuesday after Nimboyda)

Week 4

4000 year old Babylonian Inscription Representing the Square Root of 2

Following the successful completion of the 'Exploring Numbers' test, the class is now divided into two groups. John has one group in the Class 9 room, and Josh has the other in the Library Mezanine/Computer Room2/Class 8F (depending on the day)

Algebra (or Al Jabr as I often refer to it) is our topic for the next 4 weeks - we will be brushing up the skills already learned in class 7 and 8, and moving boldly forward into some new teritory.

Algebra is something people seem to love or hate with a passion. It is an extremely powerful tool which allows humanity to solve many difficult problems - like predicting how much our polution is affecting global temperatures. Being competent with Algebra is essential for many subjects in science and economics. Even better, algebra helps people to think creatively when they solve problems.

And the good news is that it is not as hard as it looks! We follow exactly the same rules as for 'normal' addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Furthermore when we use a letter to represent a number it is not instantly complicated. The number is still simply an amount or quantity like any other number, we just have to allow that we havn't counted it up yet...

Our goal, of course, is to take students on a successful journey to confidence with this important subject.

Josh the Hammer's maths group (aka 'Hammer Maths') has new homework - click here to see it. This is due on Tuesday February 27 (ie next Tuesday). Email Josh if you have any questions or need assistance with this homework. (see the first post below for the address)