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POPSAncient Blueprints of Calculus Uncovered in Archimedes Text Details have been released from the nine-year-long reconstruction project to recover the Greek mathematician's writings from this one-of-a-kind find and the results are fascinating. Buried beneath the surface of this gilded palimpsest, researchers discovered more extensive demonstrations of concepts such as infinite series, approximations, limits, and integral calculus than had been known to exist in ancient times. Archimedes wrote The Method almost two thousand years before Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz developed calculus in the 1700s. Reviel Netz, an historian of mathematics at Stanford University who transcribed the text, says that the examination of Archimedes' work has revealed "a new twist on the entire trajectory of Western mathematics."
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POPSNew Math Theory Explains Toddler's "Word Spurt" A bell-shaped word distribution and a steady child learning rate turn out to be enough to bring about the extraordinary explosion seen in children's vocabularies around this age. McMurray notes that languages have only a small number of very easy-to-learn words and many more intermediate words. So when a baby has been exposed to enough language to learn the easy words, she will acquire just a few words. As she is exposed to more language, she begins to learn the medium words. And because there are a lot of medium words, she is likely to pick up a lot of words at this stage. This, McMurray says, is the vocabulary explosion.
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POPSMath as a Civil Right The ubiquity of computers makes abstract, quantitative reasoning skills critical to a wide range of job opportunities. "Information age technology put math on the table as a literacy requirement in the same way that industrialism made reading literacy a requirement," says Moses. For that reason, he says, the country needs to raise math education standards for all students.
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POPSMusic Instruction Increases Math & Reading Scores Another case for the need to put music & its concepts at the core of education. Music, math & I'll be so bold to assert numerology are languages inextricably connected to one another. Here's a quote by one mathematician regarding this statement, "Music is a secret arithmetical exercise and the person that indulges in it does not realize that he is manipulating numbers."- G Leibnitz
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POPSResearcher Links Storytelling, Math Ability This study suggests that building strong storytelling skills early in the preschool years may be helpful in preparing children for learning mathematics when they enter school. ''It is also a nice finding, I think, because storytelling is something every parent can easily do and foster with their children, without the need to buy any fancy toys or materials,'' said O'Neill. Given these findings, O'Neill is continuing in further studies, also funded by Science and Engineering Research Canada, to explore more precisely what aspects of storytelling are linked to aspects of mathematical ability.
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