NEWSLETTER February 2018 What's new in the world of math and education this month? |
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The hunt for the largest prime numbers never stops. Jonathan Pace a FedEx driver found the newest record breaker through the collaborative effort of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS). The number is a staggering 23,249,425 digits long. |
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Math News Newly Discovered Largest Known Prime Number The recent discovery comprises a staggering 23,249,425 million digits. According to GIMPS, the number is big enough to fill an entire shelf of books, totaling 9,000 pages. The team asserts “If every second you were to write five digits to an inch then 54 days later you’d have a number stretching over 73 miles (118 kilometers) long.” | | |
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Education News Forget frustrating equations. This Indiana high school teaches algebra you’ll actually use. It didn’t look like an Algebra 2 class. But that’s kind of the point. This school teaches what his school calls “financial Algebra 2,” a direct substitute for the typical college-preparatory version that has vexed educators and students ever since Indiana made it part of its graduation requirements about a decade ago. | | |
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Monthly Mind-Bending Math Video Math Youtube star Matt Parker (yes there is indeed such a thing as a math Youtube star) had the PREVIOUS record breaking prime number printed into a large three volume set. That number was already 22 Million digits. The new record holder is almost a full 1,000,000 digits longer. |
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Education News California School District Explores Strength-Based Learning Terms like "Caring," "Competing" and "Confidence," are very familiar to students at Lake Canyon Elementary School. They're among the 10 "talent themes," or strengths, used to underpin learning in the school district here. Starting in preschool, teachers try to spot students' natural talents; by kindergarten, each child's top strengths appear on a "personalized learning plan," a new type of report card. | | |
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Math History A Brutal 500-Page Math Proof Even Experts Can't Understand Is About to Be Published A little over five years back a celebrated Japanese mathematician unveiled a 500-page proof spread over four papers, which together purported to offer a revolutionary solution to what's called the ABC Conjecture – a gruelling math problem posed over 30 years ago. | | |
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