Forum Conversations: May 2009

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Math Made Almost Bearable: Episode 2: Math as a Performance Art

In this episode I sit down with Frank Kelly to discuss what it means for math to be considered as an art, namely a performing art. Don't worry though! on the next episode we'll be right back to PERFORMING math for you as in episode one!

Math Made Almost Bearable: Episode 1: Fractions and Repeating Decimals

This is the first in a series called “Math Made Almost Bearable” One of my favorite professors, Dr. Frank Kelly and I are collaborating on this little project. The goal is simply to present short, interesting and intriguing facts about math in an approachable and engaging way. This first episode is called “Fractions and Repeating Decimals”.

Welcome

Welcome to the Virtual Honors Forum: a place where students, faculty, and staff of the University Honors Program come together for conversation. Just like in our real forum full of cozy couches, study tables and chairs, this is a place to share with others what you are studying, what has you mesmerized, mildly intrigued, or downright flabbergasted. "To share" is really the key phrase, for as many of us have discovered, real learning (and research) does not take place in a small room where we sit alone with a book. Learning is dialogue and research is collaboration.

On this blog you may find and contribute to conversations about amazing movies, brain plasticity, DDR, Harry Potter, J.R.R. Tolkien, or the ethics of cloning. But more importantly, you have discovered an interdisciplinary community of thinkers and learners who are engaged in a broad range of topics. We ask that you always conduct your conversations with courtesy and honesty.

Finally, we encourage participants to challenge and wrinkle the boundaries between the "thinkers" and the "learners"; to surrender your preconceptions and self-perceptions at the door; to accept an alternating existence between those two roles while in this forum. One day you might contribute as a "thinker," but the next day you read something which transforms you back into a "learner."