Back to School Math Courses Review Guide

 Oh no, back to school is right around the corner!

We know it can be hard to jump straight back into Math classes during the first few days after a summer away. Lucky for you we have arranged some of of our Youtube channel videos into a helpful guide to make sure you are on your game in the first week of class. Check them out below!

Never Fear: ACT and SAT Help!

Standardized testing. 

Those are THE two words faced by countless high school students every year. The SATs, in particular, constantly hover above juniors and seniors once the school year starts. College applications are important, and as competition amongst students increases, it is becoming increasingly difficult for students to gain acceptance into their top choices. While extracurricular activities and GPA are important factors in adding substance to your college application, SAT scores are also a very significant part of the mix. No high school student wakes up on a Saturday morning yearning to take a 6 hour exam, but for those applying for college, the test is basically inevitable. 

One may expect that students who are successful in high school math classes would also perform well on the math portion of the SAT. Surprisingly however, this isn’t always the case. Students who excel in high level math courses are often discouraged and frustrated when their SAT scores fail to align with their school performance. Why does this disparity occur so rampantly? The focus of math classes is largely centered on method based thinking and displaying the correct work that led to the solution. This logical way of thinking is great for grasping complex concepts, but it does not match up with the format of the SAT. The multiple choice questions of the SAT do not allow for partial credit; only the correct answer gives the student points. Furthermore, SAT math questions are based on the fundamentals of mathematics. Even students in AP or high level math classes begin to shy away from the basics as they advance in courses or turn to their calculator. It is important for all students to review basic concepts and practice them throughout their SAT prep. 

Here at the Center of Math, we have a fair amount of combined experience in standardized testing. With these tips, we hope to increase your chances of a success as much as possible! 

Meet the New Co-ops!

The Center of Math would like to introduce two new students from Northeastern University, Kelsey (left) and Ben (right)! They will be with the center until December 23rd, working on giving you blog posts, Problems of the Week, YouTube content, Advanced Knowledge Problems of the Week, and much more.

Kelsey has just completed her second year of studying Physics with a minor in Mathematics. In addition to a love of learning how the universe works, she enjoys playing music, digital art, and board games. Florence + the Machine is her favorite band, and How to Train Your Dragon is her favorite movie. Before coming here, she worked as a research assistant at Northeastern University's nanophysics lab. If you ever need a recommendation for an interesting, informative book about physics, she has many!

Ben has also just completed his second year studying both Physics and Mathematics. He enjoys rock climbing, traveling, and playing with his nephew. Ben is also an Eagle scout and enjoys camping and the outdoors. In addition to this, he fascinated by space and rocketry and hopes to one day enter the space industry.

The two of them are very excited to create quality content on topics viewers, like you, want to see! Let us know what you would like covered and they'd be happy to make blog posts or videos about it.

Gradarius and Worldwide Center of Mathematics Launch Integrated Product and Service Offerings

New Partnership Offers Aligned Differential and Integral Calculus Learning Experiences

Columbus, OH – August 4, 2016 – Today Gradarius and the Worldwide Center of Mathematics launched the first two of a planned series of Calculus learning modules at MAA MathFest 2016. The two Gradarius Content Modules are based on the Center’s Worldwide Differential Calculus and Worldwide Integral Calculusdigital and print textbooks, and will be available later this month.

Gradarius is the world’s first stepwise Calculus Learning Platform™. Gradarius provides students with engaging online learning experiences that teach and reinforce logical step-by-step problem solving methods. Students are encouraged to “show their work,” in a similar manner to solving Calculus problems on paper, and can receive meaningful feedback and guidance during each step of the problem-solving process.

“We are incredibly excited to be collaborating with the Gradarius team,” said Dr. David Massey, Founder and Director of the Worldwide Center for Mathematics. “The innovation of the Gradarius platform brings a whole new dimension of student engagement to the Worldwide Calculus series. For the first time, a student can get detailed feedback about each step of a solution while solving a problem any time of the day or night. Instructors can immediately see the details about how every student enrolled in their Calculus classes are solving each step of a problem.”

The Worldwide Center of Mathematics provides a comprehensive set of high quality instructional videos along with textbooks in digital and print formats that are designed to be more affordable than conventional textbooks. In addition to Differential and Integral Calculus the Center’s Calculus offerings include Pre-Calculus, Multivariate Calculus, Differential Equations with Linear Algebra, and Calculus resources designed specifically for high school students.

“We are impressed by the mission of the Worldwide Center of Mathematics, the quality of its instructional resources, and the dedication of its team,” said Dr. Alexei Miasnikov, Founder of Gradarius and Director of the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the Stevens Institute of Technology. “We believe that students using Gradarius with Center resources, will obtain an even deeper understanding of Calculus concepts and topics. Additionally, instructors will gain significantly better insights into their students’ strengths, areas for improvement, and overall achievements.”

MAA MathFest participants are invited to preview the modules and review the textbooks by visiting Gradarius in booth #7 and the Worldwide Center of Mathematics in booth #40. 

About the Worldwide Center of MathematicsThe Worldwide Center of Mathematics (centerofmath.org) was founded in 2008 by Dr. David B. Massey, a career mathematician and educator of more than 30 years. Its mission is to engage and nurture the local and global mathematics communities. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and focused solely on mathematics, the Center of Math publishes research and other academic resources. Leveraging today’s technology, the Center of Math produces primarily digital resources, including textbooks, videos, research and more.

About GradariusGradarius (www.gradarius.com) is the world’s first stepwise Calculus Learning Platform™. With Calculus as the principal gateway to STEM education and careers, Gradarius provides students with engaging online learning experiences that teach and reinforce logical step-by-step problem solving methods. Encouraging students to “show their work,” in a similar manner to solving Calculus problems on paper, Gradarius provides feedback and guidance to students during every step of the problem-solving process to help students achieve concept mastery and understanding. Combining data analytics with patent-pending adaptive-learning algorithmic techniques, Gradarius helps instructors save time and gain efficiencies by readily identifying areas of strength and weakness for every student. With Gradarius, universities, colleges, and high schools can realize measurable learning outcomes, increased student retention, and higher student satisfaction.

http://www.gradarius.com/gradarius-centerofmath-partnership/ 

Some of Infinity

The Center of Math is proud to announce the publication of our first non-academic text– David Craft's Some of Infinity: Peaks in the Landscape of Mathematics!

  

"But with mathematics, the more we explore, the bigger the world gets, and thus, for those adventurers out there who always want more, welcome to the world of math."

-David Craft, Some of Infinity

READ CHAPTER 1

Craft's Some of Infinity: Peaks in the Landscape of Mathematics sheds an entertaining light on mathematics, resulting in a perfect read for anyone with an interest in the subject. Some of Infinity examines the roots of mathematics, as each chapter in the novel is dedicated to a different mathematical concept. Craft delivers this wide array of information in a personable and simplistic way that is accessible to all types of readers. This allows his audience to grasp and appreciate the many layers of the book. Shying away from the academic writing style of most math books, Craft aims to show the scope of mathematics and the exploration that is possible. His passion for the subject is contagious and readers will undoubtedly adopt the endless possibilities of mathematics that Craft presents.

Topics covered in Some of Infinity: Peaks in the Landscape of Mathematics

Numbers

Infinity

Probability

Fractals

Geometry

& and many more!

A modern day Renaissance man, David Craft is well versed in many areas. He received his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Brown, and went on to earn his Doctorate in Operations Research from MIT in 2004. Craft currently works for Harvard Medical School in oncology research, developing an algorithm for radiation planning. His many interests include Gallery 263, foraging, and creating music. 






For more about Craft's mathematical interests and career, we turn to a 2015 interview conducted by the Center of Math: 

So we’ve done a little research on your background, and you have a lot of interests, I can tell. What did you start with? What did you study at school?

     At undergraduate I studied mechanical engineering, and I studied… well, I usually say I studied applied math at MIT, but really it was a subject called Operations Research. It’s Applied Math for real world operations.

What do you do now? You are an assistant professor at Harvard Medical?

     Right, but it’s a pure research job. I have a nice position where it’s research, and I get to work on whatever I want in the field of radiation therapy for cancer treatment. So the basic idea is this: when you have a tumor that you have to hit with radiation, it’s like a puzzle- how to bring the radiation beams in. We try to conform to the target and try to avoid everything else. That’s the balance, it’s sort of a high dimensional tradeoff because there’s the tumor, but all these different organs around it like the heart, or the liver, or whatever is nearby, and you have to play a sort of balancing game amongst all those things so that’s where the  math comes in.

So after all of these hobbies, jobs, and working in Oncology, what is bringing you back to pure mathematics?

     Well, every couple of years I’ve come back to just reading a book on math; popular or in-depth books, but not quite textbooks. I’ve always quite enjoyed that, it reminds me of my school days and I like that. So the reason that I wrote this particular book is that I would be talking to friends and describe some little piece of mathematics. For example, that the number of primes is infinite. Just little topics. And I really enjoyed saying that to people, and then getting them to understand what it would mean to prove such a statement, and then getting them to understand the proof. The fact that you can do that all within like 20 minutes, even for people who wouldn’t consider themselves good at math, is just great.

     I never became a math professor because I really like the one-on-one. I have been a math professor [at Williams college] for a year, and it was good, but I like the on-on-one. I’ve had a lot of those one-on-ones with people at bars or parties, and I decided at some point that I could probably cobble these little vignettes into a book.

The book Craft speaks of became a reality titled, 
Some of Infinity: Peaks in the Landscape of Mathematics!