...as my team, Beginner's Luck, wins the 2009 MIT Mystery Hunt in 63 hours, 2 minutes. Check out some snarky and fun coverage of the event by G4TV's Attack of the Show. Free 30-minute parent consultNot sure where to start?Tell us what’s going on with your student and...
Our philosophy
I Don’t Care Whether You’re Smart. I Only Care How Hard You Try
Carol Dweck hits the nail on the head. You might think that "you're so smart!" is a good thing to say to someone. You'd be wrong, though; that turns out to disincent people to work hard. If you want to praise a student, a better choice is "you must have worked hard...
I’ve Been Busy!
Gentle readers: It's been a busy autumn.* The math team is doing quite well; we have 44 points out of 60 on the CAML moving into the third round (yes, that's very good, and yet we're only just getting going)* SAT prep is going well as always, but the new development...
Welcome To The Team, Coach
Just a quick announcement that Urban High School of San Francisco has started a math competition team this year, with yours truly as the coach. It's clear from the first meeting that this is going to be fun.(Other Bay Area schools, you're on notice: we're comin' for...
Problem Of The “Every So Often”
An interesting problem came up in conversation with a College Preparatory School freshman the other day, so I thought I'd share it with you: 100! (pronounced "one hundred, factorial") is the result of taking "100 times 99 times 98 times..." and so on, all the way down...
Math Books I Recommend You Read
Hello from vacation! New York City, as it happens. I'm spending the summer emphatically not working, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy a little math every now and again.Perhaps that's true for you, too. So, here are the titles of a few books I read last year, and...