User talk:Bryan
From Prep08Wiki
This is my talk page - if you edit it, I'll get an automatic email notification. Why not just email me? Well, this leaves a permanent record of the discussion, so it's good for discussions which might prove useful to other participants. Bryan 04:48, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
I got your email and wiki generated message, so that works. This is a pretty neat feature. I did not know that was available. I will greet the particiapants as well. It's a nice way to start the workshop. Barta 11:18, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
Hello from Heather I'm trying out the talk feature. I am teaching a course primarily to future teachers - from elementary ed specializing in math to high school. It's a junior level course, but with a wide range of abilities and experience. I will update my intro page to be more specific.
Bryan, I've taught the "Mathematics of Symmetry" class a couple of times, as a gen-ed class for liberals arts majors, with 15-25 students. I used David Farmer's Book "Groups and Symmetry: A guide to discovering mathematics". I didn't really do much group theory, just a little bit at the end. Mostly, we went through classifying the rigid transformations of a plane (which took too much time, I think), symmetries of finite figures, strip patterns (where we really proved the classification) and wallpaper patterns. One problem, I've decided in retrospect, is that for most of these students there needed to be more context than Farmer's book describes - he leads them through the mathematics nicely, and provides a list of topics in art, etc, but doesn't discuss them. I was having students investigate some of these topics as group projects and present them at the end of the semester, which worked well, but I realized those topics needed to be integrated throughout the class. So I'm hoping this workshop will help me see good ways to do that. I also want to talk about other kinds of symmetry, like fractal self-similarity. Blake 23:21, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Bryan-This is partly for me to use this feature for the first time (rather than email) and partly to answer your post to my page. I'll work on my wiki page. How does one go about getting a SLU (math/euler) home page? Aileen 19:25, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
In addition to Stevens' "Handbook of Regular Patterns," you might also look at his "Patterns in Nature." -- Debbie
Thanks, Debbie, I will.Bryan 14:35, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
--- Hello from Tami
Have you heard of Dick Termes? He uses six point perspective to draw things. Check out http://www.termespheres.com/ He is from the Badlands area of South Dakota and does his work on the huge orange spheres from the old Phillips 76 gas stations. He was also featured in the September 2001 Math Horizons. He has done some Escher inspired things.
Here's a link to another sculptor that does math-inspired works. One of his sculptures was on the cover of The Mathematics Teacher in the past year. Coincidentally, I went to college with his older brother (a computer nerd who works for Mozilla)... Micajah Bienvenu Virginia 16:25, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
