Some interesting searches

Programming is done, and teaching time is really here. It also means that my sporadic posting will become more regular.

I will be going in a few directions:
1. More contract summary. Some info on other teachers contracts. Other teachers payscales….
2. Discussion about how to make our union (NYC’s United Federation of Teachers) stronger
3. More and math puzzles, easy, hard, and in between
4. Discussion of individual lessons, algebra, geometry, and combinatorics (since those are what I am teaching now).
5. Problems facing newer teachers. (soon on that. this certification stuff is really bad)
6. Travel plans (why not!)
7. Oaxaca (if I can get some good info)
8. And steps. New York City’s outdoor staircases. Stepstreets. Maybe a static page? There are already two. (Here and here). Maybe 10 by the new year? This is going to be a longterm project.

But for now I will answer some of the implied searches from the last week:

“Even number of factors” – these are numbers that are not perfect squares, since in a perfect square all the factors pair up, except the square root.

“Prime factorization of 270″ – Notice the 10? 27*10, or 3^3 * 2 * 5 (should probably rearrange that)

” “1 3 4 6″ 24 puzzle” – I got stumped on one of these last spring. Not this time.
6 ÷ (1 – 3⁄4)

“regent school, bronx, new york” Huh? I think that all public and most private high schools in the Bronx give the Regents exams. Some middle schools too. But not the fancy independent schools in Riverdale.

“distance formula comes from the pythagor” Yes, it does. Seems like a strange search.

“teaching pluto and dwarf planets” How about teaching the other dwarf planets to accept Pluto?

“using only 4 fours can you make 31, 33,” There are sites with all the answers, but since you’ve challenged me… 4! + 4 ÷ .4bar – sqr(4) = 31 and (4! – 4 + sqr(4)) ÷ sqr(.4bar) = 22 ÷ 2/3 = 33.

“micromanagement is sometimes good” There’s got to be one in every crowd.