SIMIODE Director's Blog - What Do You Do on the First Day of Class? Entry #3810 19 Nov 2023 7:38 pm Brian Winkel 0 comments What do you do on the first day of class? Some time ago, I invited my son, Doan Winkel, to share what he does in his Entrepreneurship class on the first day of class. Doan is The John J. Kahl, Sr., Chair in Entrepreneurship, at John Carroll University in Cleveland Heights OH USA. Here...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - The Real Meaning of What We Produce and Do Entry #3809 19 Nov 2023 7:30 pm Brian Winkel 0 comments The real meaning of what we produce and do Several years ago, when we were living in New York, my wife and I attended a lecture performance on Dimitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 as a part of the “What Makes It Great” series offered by Rob Kapilow at the Merkin...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - Intellectual Mathematics - Now There's a Grabber Title Entry #3759 17 Nov 2023 2:49 pm Brian Winkel 0 comments Intellectual Mathematics - Now There's a Grabber Title Intellectual Mathematics is a website written and run by Viktor Blåsjö of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He has a keen sense of what should be important in teaching undergraduate mathematics. He has a Blog with...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - Transforming Higher Education without Tears Entry #3758 17 Nov 2023 2:47 pm Brian Winkel 0 comments Transforming Higher Education without Tears At www.threejoy.com David E. Goldberg of Therapy Associates wrote about Normal and Deep Transformative Change. The Normal change column we all know and have been practicing. However, the Deep Transformative Change Column is really that, namely,...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - College Is Not for Learners Entry #3757 17 Nov 2023 2:43 pm Brian Winkel 0 comments College Is Not for Learners In a very interesting and disturbing post at The Coffeelicious web site Tyler O'Briant posts a four minute read article that will really make you think. Check it out. In the piece Tyler says, "I’m studying engineering out of genuine interest and...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - Let Go and Take Risks Entry #3756 17 Nov 2023 2:40 pm Brian Winkel 0 comments Let Go and Take Risks "Let go and take risks." Advice we give our students on occasion, advice our parents suggested to us (sometimes in frustration and with anxiety), and advice we need to take ourselves. As professors we are always doing just that, "professing." This...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - Biking into Trees Entry #3755 17 Nov 2023 2:38 pm Brian Winkel 0 comments Biking into Trees A few years back we got news from SIMIODE member, Tim Pennings. He is the author of a way cool and famous, indeed iconic, article, “Do dogs know calculus?” about his little dog Elvis which was published in the College Mathematics Journal in 2003 (34(3):...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - Mindfulness at Work Entry #3753 17 Nov 2023 2:36 pm Brian Winkel 0 comments Mindfulness at Work In a helpful piece entitled "Achieving Mindfulness at Work, No Meditation Cushion Required," in the New York Times, Job Market section of 24 April 2016, Matthew E. May suggests that we can do just that and furthermore it will make us a better contributor at work and...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - Checking Out What Is on the Other Side of the Fence Entry #3752 17 Nov 2023 2:31 pm Brian Winkel 0 comments Checking Out What Is on the Other Side of the Fence As I wander the internet looking for colleagues who are doing modeling in differential equations I stumble upon lots, I mean lots, of peripheral or related materials. One type of material is what I would call review material or prep...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - Mathematics Grips the World Through Differential Equations. Entry #3751 17 Nov 2023 2:29 pm Brian Winkel 0 comments Mathematics grips the world through differential equations. Andrew Gleason, that wonderful member of our mathematics community, who taught at Harvard for so many years and led the successful calculus reform effort said, "Mathematics grips the world through differential equations." Dan...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - High School Does Not Have to Be That Bad Entry #3750 17 Nov 2023 2:26 pm Brian Winkel 0 comments High School Does Not Have to Be Boring In a 30 March 2019 New York Times Opinion piece entitled, "High School Does Not Have to Be Boring," Jal Mehta, an associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Sarah Fine, who runs a teacher preparation program at the...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - The Wisdom of Willie Nelson Entry #3452 23 Oct 2023 12:21 am Brian Winkel 0 comments The Wisdom of Willie Nelson In spending time on FaceBook I found the following quote from Willie Nelson, the great American country and rock and roll musician, “If you can be content right now, then you’ll always be content, because it’s always right now.” When I was...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - Wish I Did Not Know Now What I Didn't Know Then Entry #3451 23 Oct 2023 12:19 am Brian Winkel 0 comments Wish I Did Not Know Now What I Didn't Know Then We were in a "saloon" restaurant in Grand Marais MI USA recently when the juke box started to play a song whose refrain and title were "Wish I Didn't Know Now What I Didn't Know Then." It was sung by the country...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - This says it all - student feedback Entry #3450 23 Oct 2023 12:12 am Brian Winkel 0 comments This says it all - student feedback Just rediscovered this from an old web site for a course, Math in the City, at University of Nebraska home page. Most important line under Student Feedback: "I liked the fact that we didn't know what we were capable of doing until we did...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - Purpose of education is to change what you believe Entry #3449 23 Oct 2023 12:10 am Brian Winkel 0 comments Purpose of education is to change what you believe. Brandon Busteed, Chief Partnership Officer and Global Head of Learn-Work Innovation interviewed Daniel Kahneman (whose name you have been hearing lots with respect to role of AI) and posted his reaction to what Kahneman said, namely “The...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - Asking Questions Entry #3448 23 Oct 2023 12:07 am Brian Winkel 0 comments Asking Questions Under the story title, “The Power of ‘Why?’ and ‘What If?’” Warren Berger writes in The New York Times on 2 July 2016 about the importance of asking questions. In talking to a senior manager, she told him, “They were smart,...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - What's In Your Learning? Entry #3447 23 Oct 2023 12:01 am Brian Winkel 0 comments What’s in your learning Years ago, close to our founding time of 2013 at our SIMIODE Staff Meeting held at SIMIODE World Headquarters (the dining room table at our home in Cornwall NY USA) I had shared with SIMIODE’s two technical directors, Leigh Noble and Mark Tourtellott, some...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - Power Series Solution - LLC and Textbook Entry #3446 22 Oct 2023 3:24 pm Brian Winkel 0 comments From time to time we get information about new ventures. Recently, Jim Sochacki (sochackipowerseriessolutions@gmail.com), President/ Owner of Power Series Solution, LLC, at http://ps-solns.com/ shared with us news of a new textbook, Applying Power Series to...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - Wave of the future and it is good for mathematics Entry #3122 20 Oct 2023 1:29 am Brian Winkel 0 comments Wave of the future and it is good for mathematics I was working in the food court area several years back at a MathFest Conference and the huge area was silent. No doubt because others were not redoing their presentations for tomorrow as I was, but rather were out enjoying the culture in the...
SIMIODE Director's Blog - How we teach applied math Entry #3121 13 Oct 2023 1:28 am Brian Winkel 0 comments How we teach applied math "Is it better to teach pure math instead of applied math?" That is the question used as a title for a column by Jill Barshay, of The Hechinger Report: Covering Innovation & Inequality in Education. The column begins, "Abstract, pure math...