Jeffrey Alexander Martin

I started teaching my first student a little over two years ago. His name was Parker. He is still my student. Parker Parker started the third grade this year and was very happy to learn that he is more advanced in English math than his classmates are in Chinese math (he is from, and lives in, China). His class is studying how to do the perimeters and areas of squares and rectangles. Parker and I went through that many months ago, and we went through the Pythagorean theorem (how to find the hypotenuse of a triangle with A^2+B^2=C^2) a few months ago, along with how to find the area of triangles. Just recently we are basically through how to find the circumference and area of circles. Parker likes math, but still, learning this type of thing can be boring. So, here's what we do. We start off by reviewing things, we do work on terminology but our main focus is on the math skills themselves. We do a square, a rectangle, and a triangle. Then we focus a little more on a cir...

Mensa is a high IQ society. The Facebook groups are quite odd to participate in. They mostly demonstrate that you can have a high IQ and be a good person, or a bad person, an informed person, or an uninformed person. Often, a high IQ just gives you the ability to confuse yourself more. High fluid IQ means that you have the capacity to recognize patterns faster than the average person. High concrete IQ means that you know more of these patterns in a given society than the average person. But, I digress. Here is a math problem that seemed to stump everyone in the group, except for me (I think that's just the right amount of hubris). Someone posted this problem and called it a math paradox. - - - - - - - If you choose an answer to this question at random, what is the chance you will be correct? A) 25% B) 50% C) 60% D) 25% - - - - - - - Go ahead and give your answer and then see if you think I'm right after you read the rest of this post. I take no offense if yo...