MathWorld

MathWorld is a little online math encyclopedia.
It has been popular since the late nineties.

Learn math in little bits by clicking around or by entering search terms at MathWorld.
For example, here is the entry on the Arithmetic Mean - the commonest "average."

Nifty, eh?
Now try to answer this question applying the arithmetic mean:
Five students in a class have an average age of 20 years.
Of the five, three of them have the same age.
Fill in the list of their ages: 18, 21, x , y , z

Note: only whole numbers are allowed.

NUMB3RS on film

Numb3rs (numbers) is a popular American television show partly filmed on the campus of Caltech. In Nigeria, it's available in pirated DVD format for about =N=250 per season dvd.

It combines an FBI crime drama with mathematics and mathematical modeling, plus a little psych, romance, and family drama to sweeten the deal. It's a convenient way to pick up some love for math.

Don (the FBI agent) is way cool and Charlie (his math-genius brother) is just adorable.
If I wasn't so gorgeous and brilliant already I would want to look and math like Amita. :)

Watch episodes and excerpts of Numb3rs here and share your favourites: characters, episodes, math references, cheesy jokes...

Matrices for shop-keepers

In Nigerian folklore,
someone called out to a young child, "Emeka what is four plus four?"
The child, frowning, said "eh, I don't know."

The same person asked, "Emeka, what is four naira plus four naira?"
The kid proudly announced, "ahahn, that na eight naira now!"

I think Seun told me this joke.
Let's learn matrix multiplication. Can you solve this?

If you're like Emeka, think of the above matrix multiplication as:

If you can write in matrix form all your:
eggs from two shops, milk from two shops, and sugar from two shops in three columns,
then you can do the following matrix multiplication:

Show me, in pictures

The New York Times featured a weekly blog on the Elements of Math.
It was a gentle invitation to mathematics, in prose.

While I like prose, love math, and enjoyed the math blog,
most humans would find it much easier to "read" this blog, in pictures.

What is my point? If we focused on making teaching materials that are truly user-friendly, a whole new industry would grow, employing armies of artists, actors, filmmakers, editors, historians, sculptors, writers, ...