One of the recurring themes in David Clarke's talks was the impact and importance of the choice of questions, both for finding out what our students know and for letting them know what we think is important. One possible and sometimes profitable version of this is to pose a wild and woolly question and stand back. On the other hand, the less disruptive measure of simply taking a quite tame question and standing it on its ear can also be highly informative. My favorite example of the latter is the problem "Give the equations of five lines passing through the point (2,3)". The teachers in question were highly reluctant to pose such a trivial problem, because their students could all find the equation of a line through (2,3) and (7,4) with one hand tied behind their backs. By FAR the most common response to the problem was "Insufficient information given." Guess who learned a lot on that one!

I propose as our topic for discussion possible interesting questions for 120 and 124 (maybe also 125 and 126.) I would like for us to consider not only the questions themselves but how they might be used (quiz question? group project? class worksheet?) and what we and/or the students might learn from them. Tom Duchamp has promised to come up with a couple of examples he has lurking about in his office, and I am hoping that lots of other people will arrive armed with their own ideas, tried or untried.

We will meet in the Math Lounge at noon on Thursday, November 10.