Magistra’s Mathematical Ghost

I ran across this interesting post by a historian who was an undergraduate mathematics major. She found her old linear algebra notes, and was surprised to find how little of it she still understood:

It’s not just that I can’t answer this question now, it’s that I can barely comprehend even what it means. The terminology bounces through my brain, stirring vague imprecise echoes… It’s disconcerting enough to come across the ghost of your own self. It would be even more disconcerting to know for sure that part of your intellect is now forever closed off to you.

Someone’s Math Teacher Weeps

I was reading some political blogs this morning, when I came across this quote:

Look, there’s an endless list of topics I don’t understand at all. I went through an entire semester of pre-Calculus in high school and was never able to understand what a function is. I still don’t. It’s a complicated subject and I was a lazy student.

I don’t know what to say to that.

The Geometry Center

The Geometry Center at the University of Minnesota was a pioneer in putting mathematics on the web. The Center specialized in visualization of advanced geometric topics.

The Center itself was closed in 1998, but their website is still available. The site is quite old (the pages that note that Netscape 2.0 is required are particularly poignant reminders), and many parts of it no longer work, but much of the content is still there.

Math GIFs

Here is a page with individual GIFs/PNGs for each math symbol. This is useful for the occasional inclusion of math formulas on a web page, for example. It also has directions on how to build more complex formulas using just HTML. The page is part of the Metamath project.