Renowned physicist and bongo player Richard Feynman said “Just because you know the name of something, doesn’t mean you know anything about it.” That’s true. On the other hand it’s pretty hard to talk about something you do know something about if you don’t know the name of it!

Feynman with Drums. If you have not read any of his popular books, I highly recommend them.

At a recent district-level meeting, a packet of suggested (required?) mathematics terms was handed out. According to this packet, students needed to know these terms to be able to functional in mathematics. How many words do you suppose are needed to speak the language of math by the end of Grade 8? 50? 100? 200?

According the student Notebook  for Building Student Vocabulary (Marzano and Pickering, 2008) there are… STOP! Before I reveal the answer, please take a moment to participate in this simple 2-click poll at Math Evil (I couldn’t get the poll script to work properly from within this post). The “correct” answer will be given after there are enough data to make it interesting.

There are literally hundreds of millions of blogs in the “blogosphere.” That said, I read a post at Caslon Analytics that provides some (outdated) data indicating that %60-%80 of all blogs founded go dormant, never to reawaken, after about a month. That’s the way it works I guess. I tried to get some more recent information from Technorati, but alas, that site is blocked from within the district.

There are some blogs I do consider worth reading. Hopefully, they will not go dormant. Here are some (give them a shot):

Deb’s Mathematics Blog

Not a typical opinion-oriented blog, but since it’s a part of About.com it does get updated regularly. Deb often posts some useful worksheets.

Mr. Teacher

Mr. Teacher’s blog supports his website Mister Teacher. He’s a 5th grade teacher so most of the stuff is at an introductory level, but that is exactly what a some kids need. He has a lot of mini-movies which are Flash-based and play very well over the web or from within a Smart Board application.

Thami’s Math Blog

This teacher does a good job of telling the rest of us what works and what doesn’t in her classroom. It’s been updated fairly frequently so far in 2009.