It all started early one morning when I was doing my usual social media check-in, from bed, with my handy Android phone and the Twitter app. In scrolling along, I happened upon a tweet that included this graphic:
Do you see the problem?
Now, please understand, I'd be the FIRST person in line to get some "math shoes", just because that's how I roll; but, in this case, what struck me was that the math shown was incorrect. So, calling upon the power of Twitter, I commented about it:
As someone fairly new to the Twitterverse, it still amazes me the quality of conversation and level of interaction that's possible with so many people using so few characters. I really never would have believed it had someone tried to convince me: What? Have a "conversation" online with total strangers from all over the world in 140 characters or less? No way!
But you can, and, especially if you're a teacher, you SHOULD. Today's blog illustrates that beautifully.
In my case, what happened next was a lovely example of our natural tendency to want to "fix" stuff, aka solve problems. This is the tweet where someone else chimed in with a helpful way to make the math shown correct and my appreciative reaction:
Beautiful, really, how just defining the variables involved as zero solves all the issues with the factorization on the shoes. If only life were that simple! Not enough money in the checking account? Set the value: checking > bills to be paid and you're all good! It's also a fantastic illustration of how the language of mathematics excels in a character-limited medium like Twitter (think for a minute of all the words you'd need to use to convey what's in that one little equation: x=y=0 and why it solves the problems on the shoes).
The discussion continued via social media with the original poster chiming in to explain how she got momentarily distracted from the content because of the concept (happens to us all):
Allow me to pause for a moment here and explain a bit about how my mind works. Remember that movie and the famous line, "I see dead people"? Well, I see math. Everywhere. All the time. Seriously. I see something, like this cool picture from Facebook that I made into a pin:
and, instantly, my mind makes these tracks from whatever it is to the math that is related, illustrated, demonstrated, or confirmed by it. These "math tracks" are what I'm interested in promoting, encouraging, and teaching to others. When I saw Bon's tweet, I "saw" Lipstick Math, which I mentioned in my next part in the social media play:
What's really awesome here is that, by virtue of technology, communication, & shared interests, someone else "saw" the math tracks like I did. In this case, it even inspired a blog!
So, now the tweets have come full circle and the math track is complete. We inspired you to write a blog on lipstick math and now you've inspired us to write a blog on connections and the power of Twitter. It seems very fitting and due homage to Connected Educator's Month, don't you think?
The Solver Blog
Author: Dr. Diana S. Perdue