Larry Gonick is a veteran American cartoonist best known for his delightful comic-book guides to science and history, many of which have previews online. Chief among them is his long-running
Cartoon History of the Universe (later
The Cartoon History of the Modern World), a sprawling multi-volume opus documenting everything from the Big Bang to the Bush administration. Published over the course of three decades, it takes a truly global view -- its time-traveling Professor thoroughly explores not only familiar topics like Rome and World War II but the oft-neglected stories of Asia and Africa, blending caricature and myth with careful scholarship (cited by
fun illustrated bibliographies) and tackling even the most obscure events
with intelligence and wit. This savvy satire carried over to Gonick's
Zinn-by-way-of-
Pogo chronicle
The Cartoon History of the United States, along with a bevy of
Cartoon Guides to other topics, including
Genetics, Computer Science, Chemistry, Physics, Statistics, The Environment, and (yes!)
Sex. Gonick has also maintained a few sideprojects, such as
a webcomic look at Chinese invention,
assorted math comics (
previously), the
Muse magazine mainstay
Kokopelli & Co. (featuring the shenanigans of his
"New Muses"), and
more. See also
these lengthy interview snippets, linked
previously. Want more? Amazon links to the complete oeuvre inside!
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jun 6, 2011 -
29 comments
Horizon asks
"What is reality?" -- youtube for links for those outside the UK:
1,
2,
3,
4. It's a hard question. To help you answer it, Stanford has a set of free courses available on line by Leonard Susskind:
General Relativity,
Cosmology,
New Revolutions in Particle Physics,
Quantum Entanglement,
Special Relativity,
Classical Mechanics,
Statistical Mechanics,
The Standard Model. (Each link is to lecture 1 of a full college course of a dozen or so lectures.) If you need help with the math,
the Khan Academy should help get you up to speed.
posted by empath
on Jan 23, 2011 -
67 comments
Mathematics Illuminated is a set of thirteen surveys in varied topics in mathematics, nicely produced with video, text, and interactive Flash gadgets for each of the topics.
posted by Wolfdog
on Apr 14, 2010 -
8 comments
Early elementary school teachers in the United States are almost exclusively female (>90%), and we provide evidence that these female teachers’ anxieties relate to girls’ math achievement via girls’ beliefs about who is good at math. A study (
abstract and
full-text [pdf]) by the University of Chicago Department of Psychology and Committee on Education found a link between math anxiety in elementary school teachers and their female students' math abilities.
[more inside]
posted by albrecht
on Jan 28, 2010 -
56 comments
Smart Shorties is a new CD being marketed to teachers that takes the beats from popular rap songs and rewrites them to the multiplication tables, with the intent of improving kids' math skills.
Forbes has a nice roundup on it's history, and
NPR has done a featurette on it as well At the very least, it's certainly worth a listen for the chuckle potential, but in addition to that, it's an interesting example of the now-booming
Edutainment industry, something that not only spans
CD's, but also
computer games and even
standalone video game consoles.
also, Smart Shorties is certainly
not the only "Hip-hop in the classroom" product out there,
nor is it the first.
posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew
on Jun 8, 2008 -
37 comments
Aptitude Schmaptitude! While the state of mathematical incompetence in this country has been much lamented, most famously in Paulos's brilliant 1988 book Innumeracy, it is still tacitly accepted . . . Being incompetent in math has become not only acceptable in this widely innumerate culture, it has almost become a matter of pride. No one
goes around showing off that he is illiterate, or has no athletic ability, but declarations of innumeracy are constantly made without any embarrassment or shame.
posted by jason's_planet
on May 3, 2007 -
140 comments
The
Value of Algebra: "
Gabriela, sooner or later someone's going to tell you that algebra teaches reasoning. This is a lie propagated by, among others, algebra teachers."
posted by daksya
on Feb 16, 2006 -
190 comments
From MathNet to that silly song about the number nine,
Square One was one of my all-time favourite programs as a kid. It hasn't been released on video or DVD, but luckily there are
plenty of fansites with video clips, pics, and other media to take you on a trip down mathematical memory lane.
posted by sanitycheck
on Jan 18, 2005 -
25 comments
Mathematics and art are thoroughly explored as two intertwined fields, in this online version of a Dartmouth course focusing on patterns [more inside].
posted by edlundart
on Oct 29, 2003 -
10 comments
Math text battles. Teachers unanimously recommended textbook series that helps students understand mathematical concepts. School Board ignored them and picked Saxon texts that promise to "raise scores on standardized tests." Are we teaching students to understand, or to score high and get politicians off the hook?
posted by darren
on May 17, 2001 -
16 comments
