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Math Worth Reading
Hello, IndieInkers!
To anyone visiting today from IndieInk, greetings. If you are curious about the image that appeared today, some further explanation can be found in a series of posts on the Mandelbrot set, and a description of the specific image can be found here.
The Mandelbrot Set—Part VII: Multibrot Sets
The Mandelbrot Set Series:
This is the seventh part in a series on Mandelbrot set fractals. In the previous post, we varied the constant term in the Mandelbrot set generating function, which gave us an infinite variety of Julia sets. Instead of changing the constant term, what happens if we change the exponent?
Division by Zero?
I am currently teaching a summer term algebra class. Over the course of five weeks, we manage to get through an entire semester’s worth of material. The pace is pretty grueling, and I wonder at my students’ capacity to keep up, but at the end of two weeks, we seem to be doing okay.
Yesterday, we started in on rational expressions and equations.1A rational expression is like a more generalized fraction—it is an fractional expression with polynomials in the numerator and denominator. One of the first thing that students learn about fractions in elementary school is that \(\frac{x}{0}\) is undefined. A fraction of that form represents a division by 0, which is not allowed. When dealing with variable expressions and equations, however, such divisions are often easy to hide, and can cause serious problems.
A Must Read
As an addendum to this morning’s post, go read this. It is important. Be sure to read the entire thing.
Shoot for the Stars
I am a white male in America, and I spent the majority of my formative years living in Iowa. I was teased some as a child because my family is Jewish, but I basically come from a place of privilege. I have never been told that I shouldn’t study mathematics because “girls don’t do math,” and I have never had to wonder if I was passed over for a position because of my color.
As a child, my parents tried to teach my siblings and me that these are not statements that everyone can make. My parents, both being anthropologists, tried to make sure that we understood that not everyone had the same kind of experiences that we had. We were make acutely aware of race- and sex-based teasing on the playground, and taught to question the assumptions of gender and ethnicity.