math geek

Covering the Full Spectrum

I seem to talk about balance a lot. (I just ran a search on “balance” and it came up with a dozen posts here on the blog.) It certainly comes up plenty when talking about writing. Balance description with pace. Balance clarity with mystery and intrigue. Adjectives aren’t evil; the overuse and abuse of them is.

Basically, I don’t go in for absolutes on a lot of things. It’s not just in writing, either. It holds in other areas, even when I make a statement that might seem absolute. For instance, I’m sure this won’t come as a surprise:

But does this mean I love math absolutely? That I love all math? That I love every single thing pertaining to math?

Nope.

There are parts I love more, parts I love less, and parts I love not at all. Like what, you ask? Here you go—examples.

Math-Thing I Love a Lot: Being able to break down a complex problem into steps or pieces that logically flow from one to another.

Math-Thing I Love Less: Sketching visuals (graphs, diagrams, etc.) by hand. I can do them pretty well on paper, but I’m a teacher. That means whiteboards. And that means, uh, not so pretty. (Favorite math quote of all-time: “Geometry is the art of correct reasoning from incorrect drawing.”)

Math-Thing I Don’t Love At All: Having to do things the long way when I know there’s a shortcut. That might be more of a math teacher thing, but it came up sometimes when I was a student, too. If a student can prove to me they understand the foundations contained in the long way and can justify their shortcut working consistently, I’ll usually let them use it. But as the teacher, I’m generally stuck with the long way in the early days of teaching a concept.

But here’s the good news about having such a full spectrum even within something I love. I suspect it means even students who generally hate math will have some aspect of it they don’t hate. My job is to find that aspect, because that’s where I can get my foot in the door.

How about you? If you love math, what part of it do you hate? If you hate math, what part of it do you love?

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Math Rant: Subtraction

This will not be a rant about how even some kids in advanced math classes have to count on their fingers to subtract (or add). I’ll save that one for another time. (For the record, with deaf kids “counting on fingers” is fairly equivalent to tapping on the desk and counting in your head.)

No, this rant is about the failure of someone (or several someones) earlier along the line failing to address both types of subtraction.

Two types of subtraction? Whatever are you talking about, Miss Lewis?

Yes, two types.

If you think of beginner’s subtraction, what do you think of? Probably the idea of “take away.” Johnny has 10 apples, and Jimmy takes 4 of them away. How many does Johnny have left?

Nothing wrong with that. Totally valid interpretation of subtraction. But it’s not the only one, dagnabbit!

There is also the HOW FAR perspective. And I don’t have the stats to prove it, but my gut says this is the more frequently useful angle in real life.

Take the problem 11 minus 8. Here’s what I see over and over in my classroom:

*holds 11 on one hand, then starts counting off on the other*

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3. I counted 8 places before 11, and the answer is 3.

Why? WHY? Even if you must count, here’s all it takes:

*hold 11 on one hand, start counting off on the other*

10, 9, 8. I’ve arrived at 8 and it took 3 steps to do it, so the answer is 3.

To me, this says these kids were taught a procedure for subtracting and memorized it without really going deeper. So I need to dig in and do some remodeling in their heads.

Even better is when they see 11 – 8 on the paper and borrow. So the tens place becomes zero and the ones place becomes … 11. Fortunately, that’s a little more rare.

*sigh*

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Math Geek Meets Novelist

No one’s shocked by the declaration that I’m a math geek who happens to write, right? Sometimes the math-geekiness informs my writing with character quirks or the way I apply logic. These are relatively small ways, where creativity and command of the language still play a larger role.

Once in a while, though, the geek takes over, and graphs ensue.

Really, this makes sense. The main reason graphs exist is to give us an instant visual of the big picture. Since a novel is hundreds of manuscript pages, it’s pretty difficult to look at it all at once as a whole.

What kinds of graphs? I’ll share a couple. (You can click them and get a better look.)

The first is a bar graph I made early on in my writing life to see how much my chapter lengths were varying. (Yes, this was also a case of my number-OCD coming out to play.) Nothing too fancy, just a simple graph in Excel.

I haven’t done one of these for my more recent manuscripts, but it gave me some thoughts about overall structure when I was first starting. Interesting note: the manuscript graphed here had twenty-five chapters at the time, but I eventually realized breaking some of them up worked better.

The second is one I just did for the first time this week as an experiment. I was curious how different plot “threads” or themes were distributed throughout the novel. Had I dropped a thread in and then neglected it for too long before it came up again? Were the key themes getting the amount of attention I feel they deserve?

So I listed three key threads, two secondary (sort of) ones, and a trait of the MC I wanted to make sure had been sprinkled consistently through the story. Then I started reading and noting the location where each item pops up or is addressed (shown as a percentage, i.e., 25% of the way through the novel). I made the graph using a middle school statistics program called Tinkerplots (yay for being a math teacher!), though something similar could be made using Excel … I think it’d just be a little more complicated.

I’m pretty pleased with the results. The three main threads obviously have sections where they each take precedence, and the “sprinkling in” looks pretty much how I want it.

Yes, I’m a geek.

Have you ever analyzed your writing in a “non-writing” way? Have you applied your day-job skills to something unexpected?

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