Teaching mathematics

The following text is a translated version of a post at tjuvlyssnat.se which publish overheard conversations which are considered funny. Pay them a visit if you can read Swedish, some are quite amusing.

\begin{translation}
One might wonder whether or not it sounded worse this time...
On a train from Linköping to Norrköping.
Two girls about 23 years old and probably teacher students are discussing teaching.
Girl 1: It was so embarrassing, last week when I went with Lisa...
Girl 2: Umm?
Girl 1: Yes, we were discussing whether or not we could "fill in" during a math lesson. And there was a guy opposite of us, he was clearly listening to our conversation.
Girl 2: Mmm...
Girl 1: Well, we came to talk about how to divide by zero. Three divided by zero has to be three, five divided by zero must be five.
Girl 2: Mmm...
Girl 1: Then we notice that the guy barely can keep himself from laughing. Oh, we must have seemed so stupid... Three divided by zero must of course be zero.
Girl 2: Yes, it has to be, haha!
Girl 1: We felt so embarrassed!
\end

I really hope that all teacher students who are to teach mathematics are not like this. I have had math teachers that barely can cope with math at a middle school level. The class was at a virtual stand-still for a week when he filled in. Math, like any other subject needs motivated and well educated teachers... otherwise we end up with people in their twenties who still don't know the basic rules of division *shivers*.

Link to the Swedish version.

Transform into infinity

I guess eight has a secret identity...


I thought about this some time ago and bet I am not the first one to think of this. Yesterday my lecturer made a similar joke on turning 8 into infinity by twisting it. Inspired by xkcd's (http://www.xkcd.com/c184.html), great comic.

Discrete math

This term I have a course in Discrete mathematics, I don't know why but I somehow feel all exited about it. The first lectures has really been a lot of fun, a part from some proofs which can sometimes be horrible (when it comes to graphs). Somehow I like graphs...

Last Friday I hacked together a small program for graphs, this was quite amusing. I implemented some algorithms and played around. I did have comments regarding my mental health how ever, since I spent Friday night with an open math book next to me. Perhaps I can actually be good at this field of mathematics... or is it yet another field where I find a lot of fascination but still can't really grasp the whole thing? As it was with logic. One thing is for sure though, the old math fear from high school is gone since I started at KTH. At least that is a good thing ^^