The Mathematics of Weight Loss

By Jon OaksSep 01, 2013
The picture below was taken in college when I was around my heaviest weight ever of 314 lbs.  I've always been a big person and I there is a lot that goes into why this is the case as well.  Was it the way I was raised?  Was it genetics?  Was it just me eating myself into a hole?  Well, this is not the place where I'm going to talk about that. What I will say, though, is that this is the most recent picture of me a little over 70 lbs lighter than I was at my highest weight.…
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My Experience at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History

By Jon OaksAug 04, 2012
Note:  This was a trip that I field trip that I took my Math For Education students on during the Winter 2012 semester.  The original reason for the visit is that we were promised that there would be a display about African American Mathematicians at the museum.  However, that display was not there.  My students were asked to leave the group, just as I was. On Saturday, March 24, 2012, I attended the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.  I didn’t know what to expect before I attended the museum.  The only African American History that I can…
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Jing and Geogebra

By Jon OaksAug 04, 2012
During the Summer 2012 semester, I decided to have my Math for Education students use Jing to send me a diagram of something that they were supposed to do using Geogebra.  If you aren’t familiar with Jing, it is a free screen-capturing and screen-casting tool from the people at Techsmith, located in Okemos, MI.  And if you aren’t familiar with Geogebra, simply put, it is a free alternative to Geometer’s Sketchpad, but it can do lots more. First off all, I have to say that I had always wanted to use Jing and screen-capturing with my students, but I wasn’t…
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Learning from Ignite

By Jon OaksAug 04, 2012
If you don’t know what Ignite is, simply put, it is a format in which speakers are limited to using 20 slides and each of those slides automatically advances every 15 seconds.  Thus, a speaker must get their point across within a maximum of 5 minutes. I learned about the Ignite format from past conferences that I have attended.  And I have attended several Ignite Events in the Detroit, MI area (they have them all around the country). This semester, I decided to have my Math for Education students give an Ignite-style talk on the last day of class.  They…
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