Friday Wrap-up

Another week from the world of math:

1)  Article touting the role of rote memorization in early math education:
http://tinyurl.com/lj759wd

2)  Fawn Nguyen describes the beginning of her classroom school year, as perhaps only she can:
http://fawnnguyen.com/first-two-days-school/

3)  LA Times op-ed on the gender-gap in mathematics:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-su-women-in-mathematics-20140826-story.html

4)  Of sheepdogs, herding, and mathematics:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28936251

5)  For some reason I've never much cared for Sudoku but do enjoy Ken-Ken, and apparently someone finds the latter useful as a classroom tool as well:
http://www.mrlsmath.com/free-teaching-tool-kenken-classroom/ 

6)  Evelyn Lamb promotes proofs by contradiction this week at "Roots of Unity":
http://tinyurl.com/p7dogqr 

7)  Week wouldn't feel complete without linking to at least one Common Core-related post:
http://www.mathforgrownups.com/common-core-common-sense-myths-about-the-standards-part-4/

8)  And in the more-physics-than-math category I'll toss in another fascinating read from Natalie Wolchover and Quanta Magazine on recently discovered "tetra quarks" (particle physics just goes on and on and on!):
http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140827-quark-quartet-fuels-quantum-feud/

9)  Lastly, I'll re-cite a couple of Math-Frolic posts from the end of last week for any who missed them, because I thought the short video "Prime Verite" was cool (and it involves the Freeman Dyson/Hugh Montgomery interaction I've referenced before):
http://math-frolic.blogspot.com/2014/08/short-film-about-prime-numbers.html

…and the James Tanton video from the day before the above relates to the same notion:
http://math-frolic.blogspot.com/2014/08/epiphanies.html