Natural Blogarithms

It took three classes but I finally finished all of the section over Matrix Algebra. During today’s lecture we walked through the concepts of matrix inverse and then matrix transposes. Its amazing how long these lectures stretch out when you choose to demonstrate the concepts with examples involving matrix operations. As far as I can tell, they are all following along very closely, except when I start going off on a tangent and trying to draw connections between linear algebra and higher level mathematics. [..]

During Calculus IV on Tuesday, we had Exam I. I’ve decided that I’m not generally very good at producing tests at the appropriate level for the course. Usually they are much too hard (1 or 2 problems that require a LOT of tedious calculation) or too long (too many problems). The reason is not that I am particularly mean-spirited but that the my writing process is flawed. [..]

During I.A. on Tuesday (Holy Cow 7:25 am is early to start a class) two students present problems at the board. I really enjoy having this part of the class. All of the students have had a colleague of mine for class and that has been a regular part of her upper level courses that she teaches. They are all used to it, but it is new to me. I enjoy hearing the though processes of the students. I even developed Rubric to grade these presentations. Don’t I sound like an education major? (By the way, I was never formally trained to teach.) [..]

During Linear Algebra on Monday, I began class by answering homework questions. … Somehow the discussion of a applications of techniques we are learning came up. Thus far, we have basically covered how to use Gauss-Jordan elimination to solve linear systems. I pointed to examples from engineering (such as structural analysis of trusses) and computational fluid dynamics (discretization procedures to solve PDEs). I understand that these are a little outside the scope of this class but I chose them because of the individuals asking the question and based on their particular interests in mechanical engineering and aeronautics. [..]

During Faith and Science on Monday, the students were allowed to continue collaborating in their groups (2 groups of 4) to decide on their final working definitions of faith and science. After 30 minutes or so, the groups went to the board and recorded their definitions for faith and for science. They then made the effort to assimilate their definitions. [..]

To begin class on Friday, I went over a few interesting entries that have been made on the class blogs. As part of this course, the students are required to maintain a personal blog over the topics of this course. Up to this point, they have each been asked to post entries on a series of questions, such as encountering conflicts between science and religion, their perspective on miracles, their firm or nor-so-firm opinion on the origin of the universe, etc. [..]

One of my students in Linear Algebra reminded me of quote I had heard some time back concerning the pecking order of the sciences. The version he quoted was what he had heard from a colleague of mine here at Wayland: [..]

So far in the Faith and Science course we have spent some time discussing the importance of our worldview, Flatland, and definitions of important terms. We concluded that even scientists who hope to achieve true objectivity are inevitably victims of their own biases. Are there are ways to overcome this bias? [...]

What the heck is it? I considered making my own contribution similar to Little David’s series of the “Watzit” contest. I decided that since this is likely to be a one time entry that you could just pretend to not know what it is and pretend not to see the rest of the pictures below. [...]

Having just finished a very short chapter on vector functions, we began the chapter that will cover Partial Derivatives. Before we started that lecture, I took a little class time to answer a homework question. It was one of my favorites. Having covered the concept of curvature, the students were asked to . .