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Where's the t?
Once upon a time, I lectured Maths 1A calculus, and when I got to teaching hyperbolic trig functions I put a great deal of effort into making sure they were well-connected to other ideas the students knew. So I listed the properties of ordinary trig functions and alongside I listed the matching properties of hyperbolic trig functions.
Numbers don't change the situation
The coordinator of first year Chemistry had a chat to me the other day about how to support students in solving word problems. The issue is that students have trouble using the words to help them decide what sorts of calculations need to be done in order to solve the problem. This issue is not new – people have been solving word problems for thousands of years, and the maths education literature is littered with papers discussing the issue. No clear concensus has been reached, of course, because there are any number of factors that affect students' ability to solve problems.
There is no such thing as "just a quick question"
We often get students in the MLC saying that they have "just a quick question": "Finally you're up to me - it seems like a long time to wait when it's just a quick question..."; "I know it's 4:05 and the Centre closed five minutes ago, but it's just a quick question..."; "I'm sorry to interrupt you when you're talking to another student, but it's just a quick question...". I do understand these students' need to have their question answered, but the problem is that at the MLC there is no such thing as a quick question. Here's why...
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