Maths Links for Teachers

Audio/Video Resources

On Saturday, May 5, 2001 The Institute for Theoretical Physics (University of California) held a Teachers' Educational Forum on "String Theory: Is it the Theory of Everything? What Are the Building Blocks of the Universe? " Recordings of the presentations by some of the world's leading String Theorists are available. (You will need Realplayer to listen to the recordings.) These talks are a mind stretching illustration of the effectiveness of mathematics in explaining the nature of our Universe!
The Quirks & Quarks Program Archives. Science broadcasts from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. There are several mathematical talks and interviews among the many fascinating topics covered over the years. The topics are searchable.

Catalogues of Maths Sites

Frank Potter's Science Gems - Mathematics
K-12 Internet Sites
Math Forum: Internet Collection and MathPuzzles
Knots on the Web must be the definitive list of knot links anywhere on the Web. Enjoy exploring aspects of this fascinating and important branch of Mathematics.
POPmathematics
SAMI - List of Maths links
Yahoo! - Mathematics

Data Sources

Athletics Home Page to find all the world records
Engineering Statistics Handbook (a USA government Site)
Use the Madras College Results as your starting point for a Statistical Investigation concerning the performance of Scottish Schools in the 2001 SQA exams.
The UK Government Statistical Service: The Source of UK Facts and Figures.

Dictionaries/Encyclopedias of Maths

Search Eric's Treasure Trove of Mathematics
For an overview of the sheer size and extent of Modern Mathematics visit the Mathematical Atlas. It is packed with fascinating facts and great links.
Mathematics Dictionary from Harcourt and Academic Press
Mathematical Quotations Server

History of Maths

A regional guide to the History of Maths
Read Hilbert's Address to the International Congress of Mathematicians at Paris in 1900. Read about his Problems with Commentary and about A Century of Mathematics
History of Pi
This Library of Congress Page gives access to images of historical Maths sources held by the Vatican.
St Andrews University Maths History Site
The Mathematics Jotters that George Washington used at school are finally on-line after 260 years. You can also read A Letter he wrote later in his life extolling the virtues of a Mathematical education.

Interactive Resources

More Mathematics than Science has some useful interactive demonstrations (your machine will need to be able to run Java Applets for these to be functional)
The Journal of Online Mathematics and its Application (JOMA) has a growing collection of what they term Mathlets (ie Java Applets, Flash, Shockwave animations etc) of use for the teaching of Mathematics. These might be used as classroom demonstrations or for student exploration. Our own Home Learning Pages use several of the 'Mathlets' that are now in this collection.
Visit the astonishing National Library of Virtual Manipulatives

Mathematical Curiosities

Mathematical Games

An excellent classroom team game called Mathematical Jeapardy along with a large bank of suitable mathematical questions. Great stuff!!

Mathematical Institutions/Societies/Clubs/Communities etc

Learning Teaching Scotland
The Association of Teachers of Mathematics (ATM)
Centre for Innovation in Maths Teaching(Univ of Exeter)
A comprehensive list of links to Mathematical Societies world wide
The Mathematics Trust (responsible for the UK Maths Challenge)
Maths Year 2000 This is a UK government initiative promoting an awareness and understanding of mathematics for all. The initiative aims to celebrate and promote mathematics for pupils, parents, teachers, employees and employers
The Maths Year 2000 Scotland WebSite The Scottish dimension to Maths Year 2000.
NRICH the On-line Maths Club
The National Grid for Learning. This is a link to the pages supporting IT use in the Maths Curriculum.
PASS Maths From Cambridge University, an on-line monthly maths magazine for a wide audience.
The Scottish Maths Council runs the Scottish Maths Challenge and also the Enterprising Maths Contest.
A feast of excellent articles at the AMS What's New in Mathematics Archive

On-line Maths Courses

Problem Solving

Read about the Millenium Problems at the Clay Mathematics Institute WebSite and read Keith Devlin's Article in the Guardian Newspaper about the problems.
NRICH the On-line Maths Club
Unsolved Mathematics Problems

Recreational Maths

Polyhedral nets with Calendars for 2002 are now available from the CENTRE for INNOVATION in MATHEMATICS TEACHING. (The links will download the PDF files. PDF Reader is free to download and is needed to read them)
The Game of SET is worth investigating
Mathematical Games & Recreations ( from St Andrews University)
The game Middleman is a quite remarkable simulation of Buying and Selling in the marketplace
Try these extraordinary Mirror Puzzles ... mind stretching!
Pentominoes and Art
Pentominoes - An Introduction
Here is a Product and Sum recreation that will have your students calculating like mad to beat the class record!
Information on Pentomino Puzzles is from Canada's SchoolNet. It contains advice on classroom use.
PUZZLE FUN is a bulletin edit by Rodolfo Kurchan (Buenos Aires - Argentina) about polyominoes and other puzzles
Tangrams - An Introduction
Sliding Block Puzzles - An Introduction
The 1999 World Puzzle Championship All the puzzles used can be downloaded but you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view them. These puzzles are excellent with many of a mathematical nature and although hard they will provide a worthwhile resource in the Maths Classroom.

Resources for Secondary School Maths

An article in Compass on using rhythm in maths.
Explorer - materials by topic

The Mathematics Enhancement Programme has produce excellent classroom materials:

Download Page for Year 7

Download Page for Year 8

All materials require the free Acrobat Reader to view and print. The effort is well worth it. These materials are of the highest quality and are comprehensive in scope. Scottish teachers in particular might welcome the exercises on Stem & Leaf Plots and Box & Whisker Plots in the Unit 20 Statistics material.

Illuminations. This excellent Site comes from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. The aim is to provide internet resources to improve the teaching and learning of mathematics for all students and in particular to "illuminate" the new NCTM Principles and Standards for School Mathematics.
The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Site (based in Reston, Virginia) has "Mathematics Teacher Online" with some interesting articles in their archive.
Maths Room - an excellent guide to on-line resources for school mathematics from Singapore.
New Zealand Mathematics is funded by New Zealand's Ministry of Education and aims to "communicate curriculum and administrative materials, enhance teaching and learning, raise student achievement and advance professional development for school management and teaching staff. You will find here high quality material suitable for our S1-S2 classes. Particularly impressive is their Problem Solving Area with a large collection of graded problems including teaching guides and very detailed solutions.
Loughborough University's Open learning Project workbooks. High quality PDF format Notes, questions and answers on a huge range of topics. Suitability (with selection) is from S4 Credit to Advanced Higher. Also their Electronic Leaflets Resource Index. A large resource of Notes and exercises in PDF format.
Resources (Centre for Innovation in Maths Teaching)
The Totally Tessellated Site has all the templates for printing out your specialist graph/tiling paper
Worksheet World - innovative worksheets which can be viewed on-line before purchase for your school
The World of TROTTER MATH is awash with wonderful mathematical ideas.
www.math.com This must rank as the most desirable Web Address for a Maths Site!!

School Mathematics departments

Chinese International School (based in Hong Kong)
Highland Middle School in Illinois
John Handley High School Department of Mathematics WebSite is well worth a browse. It contains some interesting and unusual mathematical items which could fill a few entertainment slots with your classes!

Sofware for the Mac

Lesson Ideas

Branch out... introduce Bulgarian Patience to your class!! Advice is here.
For these Geoboard Activities described by Ephraim Fithian why not use the Virtual Geoboard at NLVM? More ideas are at Geoboards in the Classroom from the Math Forum
Some Lesson plans and Teaching materials
The Presidential Awards for best Maths Lessons
Some excellent "Fun" maths lessons from Cynthia Lanius

Specific Maths Topics

Arithmetic properties of Binomial Coefficients
A link concerning Descartes' LOST THEOREM
Euclid's Elements (this is the whole lot on-line!)
The Fibonacci Sequence. Some 'natural' occurrences with advice on classroom use
Teachers should visit Mr Narain's Golden Ratio Pages for some ready made activities for your class. An excellent resource.
The period length of the decimal expansion of a fraction
The Phyllotaxis Site from Smith College (Northhampton, Massachusetts) describes itself as "an interactive Site for the mathematical study of plant pattern formation".
Pythagorean Theorem has 29 different proofs!
Spatial Reasoning using Cubes and Isometric Drawings from the NCTM Illuminations Site is an interactive delight!

We would welcome comments and feed-back about these links or any suggestions for new links

E-mail us at : madrascollege.maths@fife.gov.uk

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