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Introducing: MATH TEACHERS CODE

November 10, 2018

One on Epsilon Team

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What does K-12 mathematics education really need? Frankly, at One on Epsilon, we don't claim to have a definitive answer! However we certainly have some ideas. One such idea is our MATH TEACHERS CODE series that ran for 6 weeks during November and December 2018. All the sessions were recorded and can be played back on YouTube. The key content can also be accessed in PDF format.

Creative joyful transformation is already taking place in the mathematics education world. Our friends at The Global Math Project, Q.E.D. and Tap into Minds offer great viewpoints and perspectives with which we align our philosophy. Some general themes include "less procedure and more creativity", "less memorization and more problem solving" and finally "more doing and less measuring". All these involve joyful global mathematics, putting humanity at the center.

Wow! These are big words with which we align, but let's get back to the fine print. After all, at One on Epsilon we like focusing on the details. Our free Epsilon Stream platform is all about that. It is all about giving you the best content and at the same time driving your curiosity. So how about details of mathematics education. What details are we talking about?

Our contribution for the end of 2018 was the MATH TEACHERS CODE series. Our goal is to enrich mathematics teachers who wish to grow their programming abilities and learn how to code. The series isn't limited to maths teachers and anyone can join. Still, it focuses on mathematics education.

We believe that enriching educators with coding skills can greatly help mathematics education as a whole. Many mathematical problems can be represented, analyzed and investigated via computer programming; and likewise, many aspects of computer programming and software engineering feed on mathematics.


This post began by suggesting that education should focus less on procedure and more on creativity. You may ask: Isn't coding all about procedure? Our answer is no! It is one of the most creative tasks that one can do. Place thirty teenagers in front of a trigonometry problem and you will get many answers that follow the exact same method. Do the same with an algorithmic problem requiring a computer program as a solution and you'll get a variety of valid solutions.

With code, we use our creativity to design procedures that the computer then follows.

The first edition of MATH TEACHERS CODE ran on Sunday November 18, 3:00 PM US Eastern Time, and the series then ran for 6 consecutive Sundays at the same time each week. The meetings were YouTube live streamed and can also be played back at anytime. The instructor was Dr. Yoni Nazarathy.

For this sequence of meetings, we used the Julia Language via Julia Box. Julia is a modern high-performance language, focusing on scientific computing. It is similar to Python and Matlab in many ways, but is very unique due to it's simplicity and running speed. You don't need to install anything to use it! Just log into JuliaBox using an e-mail account. The first lesson also demonstrates how to do this. Then, the other lessons run through a variety of coding examples, focusing on mathematical exploration via Julia. No prior knowledge is needed. Discussion of other aspects of computer programming also takes place.

Give it a try! Register with us and subscribe to our YouTube channel to get updates.

Girl with dad and computer