Plot summary
The nameless student begins with a seemingly innocent statement by her math teacher: "you know, almost everything in life can be considered a math problem." The next morning, the hero finds herself thinking of the time she needs to get up along the lines of algebra. Next comes the mathematical school of probability, followed by charts and statistics. As the narrator slowly turns into a "math zombie", everything in her life is transformed into a problem. A class treat of cupcakes becomes a study in fractions, while a trip to the store turns into a problem of money. Finally, she is left painstakingly calculating how many minutes of "math madness" will be in her life now that she is a "mathematical lunatic." Her sister asks her what her problem is, and she responds, "365 days x 24 hours x 60 minutes." Finally, she collapses on her bed, and dreams that she is trapped in a blackboard-room covered in math problems. Armed with only a piece of chalk, she must escape and she manages to do just that by breaking the chalk in half, because "two halves make a whole." She escapes through this "whole", and awakens the next morning with the ability to solve any problem. Her curse is broken...until the next day, when her science teacher mentions that in life, everything can be viewed as a science experiment.
George Pólya was a Hungarian-American mathematician. He was a professor of mathematics from 1914 to 1940 at ETH Zürich and from 1940 to 1953 at Stanford University. He made fundamental contributions to combinatorics, number theory, numerical analysis and probability theory. He is also noted for his work in heuristics and mathematics education. He has been described as one of The Martians, an informal category which included one of his most famous students at ETH Zurich, John von Neumann.
Proof is a 2000 play by the American playwright David Auburn. Proof was developed at George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey, during the 1999 Next Stage Series of new plays. The play premiered Off-Broadway in May 2000 and transferred to Broadway in October 2000. The play won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play.
In science education, a word problem is a mathematical exercise where significant background information on the problem is presented in ordinary language rather than in mathematical notation. As most word problems involve a narrative of some sort, they are sometimes referred to as story problems and may vary in the amount of technical language used.
In contemporary education, mathematics education—known in Europe as the didactics or pedagogy of mathematics—is the practice of teaching, learning, and carrying out scholarly research into the transfer of mathematical knowledge.
Mathcounts, stylized as MATHCOUNTS, is a non-profit organization that provides grades 6-8 extracurricular mathematics programs in all U.S. states, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and U.S. Virgin Islands. Its mission is to provide engaging math programs for middle school students of all ability levels to build confidence and improve attitudes about math and problem solving.
Mu Alpha Theta (ΜΑΘ) is the United States mathematics honor society for high school and two-year college students. In June 2015, it served over 108,000 student members in over 2,200 chapters in the United States and in 20 foreign countries. Its main goals are to inspire keen interest in mathematics, develop strong scholarship in the subject, and promote the enjoyment of mathematics in high school and two year college students. The name is a rough transliteration of math into Greek. Buchholz High School won first place in 2023 for the 15th time in the annually held national convention.
Founded in 1920, The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) is a professional organization for schoolteachers of mathematics in the United States. One of its goals is to improve the standards of mathematics in education. NCTM holds annual national and regional conferences for teachers and publishes five journals.
The Texas Math and Science Coaches Associationor TMSCA is an organization for coaches of academic University Interscholastic League teams in Texas middle schools and high schools, specifically those that compete in mathematics and science-related tests.
A math circle is an extracurricular activity intended to enrich students' understanding of mathematics.
Kay Toliver is a teacher specialising in mathematics education.
Mathematical anxiety, also known as math phobia, is a feeling of tension and anxiety that interferes with the manipulation of numbers and the solving of mathematical problems in daily life and academic situations.
Sideways Arithmetic From Wayside School is a children's novel by Louis Sachar in the Wayside School series. The book contains mathematical and logic puzzles for the reader to solve, presented as what The New Yorker called "absurdist math problems." The problems are interspersed with characteristically quirky stories about the students at Wayside School.
Singapore math is a teaching method based on the national mathematics curriculum used for first through sixth grade in Singaporean schools. The term was coined in the United States to describe an approach originally developed in Singapore to teach students to learn and master fewer mathematical concepts at greater detail as well as having them learn these concepts using a three-step learning process: concrete, pictorial, and abstract. In the concrete step, students engage in hands-on learning experiences using physical objects which can be everyday items such as paper clips, toy blocks or math manipulates such as counting bears, link cubes and fraction discs. This is followed by drawing pictorial representations of mathematical concepts. Students then solve mathematical problems in an abstract way by using numbers and symbols.
HMMT is a semiannual (biannual) high school mathematics competition that started in 1998. The Autumn (November) tournament is held annually at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Spring (February) tournament is held annually at MIT, also in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The competition is organized and executed in a tightly-knit partnership between the corresponding student groups at Harvard and at MIT. From problem writing to logistics, the competition is handled primarily by undergraduate students at Harvard and MIT.
Math Girls is the first in a series of math-themed young adult novels of the same name by Japanese author Hiroshi Yuki. It was published by SoftBank Creative in 2007, followed by Math Girls: Fermat's Last Theorem in 2008, Math Girls: Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems in 2009, and Math Girls: Randomized Algorithms in 2011. As of December 2010, the series had sold over 100,000 books in Japan. On November 23, 2011, an English translation of the book was released by Bento Books, who subsequently released translations of Fermat's Last Theorem (ISBN 978-0983951339) and Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems (ISBN 978-1939326294) on December 5, 2012, and April 25, 2016, respectively.
Modern elementary mathematics is the theory and practice of teaching elementary mathematics according to contemporary research and thinking about learning. This can include pedagogical ideas, mathematics education research frameworks, and curricular material.
Inside Out & Back Again is a verse novel, written in free verse by Thanhha Lai. The book was awarded the 2011 US National Book Award for Young People's Literature and one of the two Newbery Honors. The novel was based on her first year in the United States as a ten-year-old girl who didn't speak English, in 1975.
Alfred S. Posamentier is an American educator and a lead commentator on American math and science education, regularly contributing to The New York Times and other news publications. He has created original math and science curricula, emphasized the need for increased math and science funding, promulgated criteria by which to select math and science educators, advocated the importance of involving parents in K-12 math and science education, and provided myriad curricular solutions for teaching critical thinking in math.
Elham Kazemi is a mathematics educator and educational psychologist, the Geda and Phil Condit Professor in Math and Science Education in the College of Education of the University of Washington.
