AC ADEMICS
The Math Curriculum This year’s grade 8 curriculum is the first to transition. Another grade will be added each year, with all ninth graders eventually taking Geometry and all 10th graders taking Algebra II. IN P OLYNOMIAL S A S IN LIFE
The Math Department recognizes that some students will become mathematics majors, while the majority of students will integrate their mathematical understanding and appreciation into their other studies. No matter what future careers their students forge, Burroughs math teachers believe the problem-solving discipline that they teach has many applications in a broad context. “Collaboration, communication and working with ill-defined problems are skills that our students will need extensively when they enter the job market,” says Crowley. “We are working to show students the value of many mathematical practices — quick procedural thinking and an ability to articulate ideas aloud, to ask the right question, to generalize, to find patterns, to articulate coherent explanations, to represent mathematical ideas visually, to work collaboratively, to persist, to recognize when they don’t ‘get’ it, and to thoughtfully fill in gaps in their understanding.” The hope is that Burroughs graduates will use the skills they honed in their high school math classes virtually every day of their lives.
GO FIGURE
MADDIE BRANDT ’11 When the solution to a math problem eludes Maddie Brandt ’11, she walks away with a nagging feeling in the back of her brain. “It will bother me until I completely understand what is going on,” says Brandt, who is working on a doctorate in applied mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley. “I think this happens in every subject. In an English class, you obsess over an essay until your writing is conveying exactly what you are trying to say; or in an art class, you keep altering a painting until it looks exactly the way you want it to. Identifying these weak points in your work and poring over them allows you to ultimately make something great, and math provides no exception. Math is a very detail-oriented subject; you never want to leave a case out of an argument or assume something that you don’t understand is true.” Brandt loves problem–solving. “Mathematics gives you a systematic framework in which to solve puzzles,” she says. She appreciates that her math teachers at Burroughs emphasized
writing clear, crisp arguments and cautioned against taking any facts for granted. “I remember in trigonometry we learned many sine and cosine identities, and we were always expected to be able to rederive them if we wanted to use them. I really liked that. I find it much easier to remember something when I understand where it came from, as opposed to memorizing a formula.” Brandt is about halfway through the doctoral program at Berkeley. She has completed her course work and has taken her preliminary and qualifying exams. Now, she attends seminars and reading groups in which a few students identify a topic they wish to explore together. She also conducts research on tropical geometry, a relatively new area of math that seeks to understand connections between the geometry of solutions to polynomial equations and polyhedra. Brandt hopes to ultimately teach math at the college level.
April 2018 |
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