I do a fair amount of online for things with simple answers. Like, if the question is "Solve this quadratic", the answers are going to be two numbers, and I do give multiple attempts. But if the question is "Graph this quadratic", the computer interface is terrible. I found that students who can solve quadratics with the computer can still do so on paper (well, aside from the ones who are cheating and using something like mathway, but frankly those students would cheat on paper too) but that graphing on the computer did not translate well. But what I do do is work the homework myself and slightly alter the way my classroom examples are phrased so that the students will not be confused by the software. I agree that that shouldn't be happening. I do really like it for being able to give multiple attempts so that they can actually use it for practice and you don't get the "I did the whole stupid assignment wrong?! Oh well, on to the next one"

It is depressing for those of us living it, too. :(

If I graded homework on completion instead of correctness, I'd never be able to get students into my office hours to try and actually work the problems correctly. They'd just write down anything in order to get the points. If I didn't grade it at all, almost nobody would do it and 80% of the class would fail. So I *have* to grade it and I have to do it on correctness. I'd far, far rather assign homework, write a detailed answer key including types of common errors, post it publicly, and allow the quick students to do only as much as they needed while assigning sufficient for the slower students to learn the material and self-correct. But I just can't have that percentage of students failing.

You know I tried that and ... really, the texture was weird. It went much better with just a little bit of oats + flaxseed, + yay fiber.

Last year for tetanus. It had been 9.5 years and my family lives on a farm and I'm a klutz and always getting poked with rusty nails and stuff when I visit, so I definitely didn't want to let it go past 10. I got the TDaP, but it was the tetanus I was really concerned about.

http://www.grouprecipes.com/14816/fanny-farmers-banana-nut-bread.html This recipe is delicious and has no butter. Nuts are optional too.

There are times when I've seriously considered just quitting my job to do math tutoring. There's definitely a market, and if the PS keeps doing this sort of stuff there'll continue to be one!

Something that lets the teacher have the kids who actually get it pull up the grades of the others who don't so that they can pretend they passed. In most cases kids are deliberately assigned so that you have one clever kid per group. They justify this because "Oh, they learn so much by explaining it to the other kids", but yeah. It's exactly as bad as you think it is.

While I agree with you, what I would like to see PS doing with severely asynchronous students is funding online classes so that at least the student can have one or two subjects in which they are actually challenged. I think that a student who's learned how to work hard and study in some area can often transfer that work ethic to other classes, but if the classes are uniformly easy, the issues you mentioned really come into play. I would think the AOPS classes would be suitable for mathematically talented students. When my uncle was in high school, they paid for him to take correspondence classes from a very well-regarded professor in his area of interest -- that would also be reasonable.

I don't hate crossfit. I just don't think it's a good choice for an overweight beginner who doesn't really want to be exercising anyway and is trying to do enough to improve health.

Roasted or oven-baked low-carb vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, or similar) and a chunk of meat. Burgers are great, a lot of times I'd briefly drop the vegetables into the pan I cooked the burger in so they'd get nice and burgery. Salsa on the burger makes it nicer too. Pork chops work fine for this too. If your budget's a bit higher steak would be great too. Chicken (dark meat w/skin) is also great because it reheats well, if you batch-cook the chicken then you can take it from the fridge and just toss it into the pan you're roasting the vegetables in -- by the time the vegetables are done the chicken is hot, the skin is re-crisped, and if you put the chicken on top of the veg they've soaked up some of the chicken fat which makes them delicious. Chicken dark meat is also pretty cheap.

What frequently (and sadly) happens is that they pass calc 1 after a couple attempts, calc 2 after a couple attempts, flounder unsuccessfully in calc 3 while working on gen ed requirements the entire time, run into time-to-degree problems and are no longer eligible for financial aid, and maybe leave with a bachelor of general studies or nothing at all plus a bunch of student loans.

Had someone fail remedial algebra last semester after telling me the entire semester that s/he did not belong there because s/he had taken calculus. There was some patchy knowledge of a few topics which manifested as a refusal to work the problems in the way that were being taught in class that would best set them up for success in the future. For example, this student refused to solve quadratic equations by any method other than the quadratic formula, which resulted in rather serious issues when trying to solve x^3 - x^2 = 0, which this person was unable to do. There was no ability to work with fractions other than by punching them into a calculator, which led to the expected problems with working with rational expressions. sigh The biggest issue imo is that they've been systematically lied to throughout their education, being told that they were learning math when what they were really learning was how to recognize a few specific types of problems and punch buttons on a calculator to get a number out.

The biggest thing for me was making it easier to eat healthy than not. I learned a few specific ready-meals that I could have on the table immediately. I prepped protein that I knew I was ok with and I'd cook a few day's worth at once. If necessary, I did stuff like buy the steam-in-bag vegetables -- yes, ok, they're expensive, but they're less expensive than fast food. Basically, I made it so that I could have a healthy meal on the table with 5 minutes of actual work and possibly some sitting around time when I was exhausted after a rough day. Then I (temporarily) got rid of the things at home that I would default to instead of eating healthy. I'd go with cereal, toast, chips, popcorn, nuts -- basically anything that was already prepared and fast and easy, and mostly carbs with some fats. I have most of those back in the kitchen now, but removing them as an option forced me to go beyond my default. When on-plan is easy and off-plan requires a trip out, staying on-plan becomes easier.

At times like this is it the mother's duty to protect the children from bacon that might have potentially gone off ;)

I would not recommend starting with Crossfit for an overweight, untrained person. Some guys do really well with just going to the gym with headphones and knocking out time on a stationary bike or elliptical or similar.

Ananemone is right on. The only way this would ever come up as in any kind of dispute in a MC test is if a student were asked "what is an appropriate model for 18/3?" and both were presented as alternatives. I would consider such a test to be incredibly poorly written mathematically although I do acknowledge such tests exist. Similarly, I could see a student being marked wrong because they were told to present a word problem for division and presented the wrong model -- but I would also consider the teacher to have erred. I'd mark it wrong if they were told to write a word problem for 18/3 and came up with "Johnny had 18 apples and ate 3" or something. It's similar to (and I've heard of it happening) marking a kid wrong because they were told to come up with a word problem for 2+1 and wrote "Johnny had an apple and found two more" because the teacher considered that to be 1+2. I have noticed that many of my algebra students struggle with translating things such as "2 is subtracted from 4"and tend to write "2-4" and now I am wondering if they had somehow intuited "The number written first needs to come first" or something similar? I will have to investigate this further.

No, but I would ask if he wanted me to dial a cab for him while not letting him into the house.

I don't use it for chopping veggies but it works fine for slicing. Maybe I'd do slightly better with a knife and a lot of practice but for everything there's an opportunity cost. Given as I'm super clumsy and sealing up a cut or burn at least once a week I think a mandoline would be a terrible, terrible idea for me, unless I wore chainmail gloves. It's great for cutting butter into flour, shredding cheese, and making mayonnaise. I've used it for pureeing in a pinch but I have a shiny new immersion blender now :D I've also used it for finely chopped nuts and for chopping up oatmeal when I wanted small chunks for part of my oatmeal cookie dough. I also like it for cookie crumbs -- gingersnap crust on a cheesecake is heavenly.

Do you mean the example word problems of partitive vs. measurement examples? (If you meant something else, sorry). The point that they're trying to make is that they're asking for different things based on the language, and both of these model division. So 24/4 could be modeled either by (to steal examples from their page) "I have 24 cookies. I want to put them on 4 plates, so that I have the same number of cookies on each plate. How many cookies should I put on each plate?" or "I have 24 cookies. I want to put 4 cookies on each plate. How many plates do I need to hold my cookies?" Edit: To follow your edit -- yes, they are not saying something fundamentally different where 18/3 is not equal to 6.

I am actually not intending that as snark. I went through several times attempting to delete stuff that could be taken as snark, but clearly I was unsuccessful. Furthermore, I'm not implying that you can't switch between equivalent forms of the same problem. But I do believe that it's the same problem.

If they want it, they can pay for it.

18/x = 3 is exactly the same problem as 18/3 = x. Being able to casually flip between them is something that I strive for as a level of deep mathematical understanding.

That's a reasonable example although I'd modify it to "how many 1/2 pound boxes can I make?" Yes, this only works if the students actually understand word problems with numbers. One of the big issues that we have with math education in this country is that we attempt to run before we can walk. For example, we try to have students who cannot compose a coherent sentence write a research paper. Students should not be attempting dividing fractions until they are fully competent with dividing numbers, including both solving word problems for given values and constructing word problems that fit given problems.

That's actually not what I'm saying. "Divide 18 pencils among 3 classmates" has only one answer, and of course 18/3 is modeled by that. But if I asked a student to model 18/3 and come up with a word problem, they could equally well ask "I divide 18 pencils among my friends, and each friend gets 3 pencils. How many friends do I have?" to which the answer is "I have 6 friends, 18/3".