The book
I arrived at my office, parked my bike to the left of my desk, cranked up the computer, and clicked on my email. What a nice surprise. The first message I noticed in the subject line was "math guide for journalists." The senior acquisitions editor wrote me back. Here's her note:
"Jay,
Thanks for the response with all of your feedback on the books already out there. Let's go ahead and talk this week about the book idea and see if it makes sense to pursue it. I'll plan to call you on Thursday at 3pm EST. Does that work?
Best, ------ "
Well, why not?
I wrote her back (making 100% sure I spelled her name correctly):
"Thursday at 3 p.m your time, noon my time will be great. I look forward to visiting with you. Meantime, let's have fun watching congress this week.
Jay "
I'll report back.
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The Quiz
Interesting insight again.
In my last post I wrote about precision. I went into this very easy quiz knowing that I knew the elementary material Prof. John would put up on the board for us. I also figured that I would make a stupid mistake just by being careles but I should try not to.
During my 11 o'clock features class I lectured my own students about how important it was to be careful, to go slow enough, to re-read copy. I told myself I'd be careful on my first quiz, go slow enough, and re-read my answers.
The material was easy and everyone was going through the problems fairly quickly. So was I. I even told myself, "OK, go over everything before you turn the paper in." Did I? Of course not.
John went over the answers immediately. When he was half way through question 5, I'm pretty sure three or four of my classmates turned around when I said, "dang!." As part of a problem, nested inside a bunch of brackets and parenthesis you were supposed to multiply 2 x 3 and then square the answer (36, by the way). Racing through the test I saw the two and the 3 and my mind went "five." I squared 5 to get 25 and that messed up the rest of the problem. O.K., a lesson learned yet again.
Just today, I handed a paper back to a student who wrote "window seal" instead of "window sill." After my quiz experience, I know I probably shouldn't have drawn a picture of a baby seal balancing a ball on his nose in the margin by his very innocent and embarrassing error.
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3 comments:
My daughter is in your math class, maybe you can interest her in journalism. I've been writing a financial blog (allallan.blogspot.com) for four years, so something called writing runs in the family. She will freak if she knew I was posting to you, do be gentle.
Allen, Thanks for your note. I'm happy to visit with your daughter about journalism. Just ask her to introduce herself to me. She is also welcome to sit in on any of my classes. I teach a feature writing class and a class for seniors that puts out an online publication called Borderbeat.net.
I enjoyed glancing at your blog. I haven't considered charts and financial markets since I read about the Eliott Wave Theory 30 years ago.
By the way, comments are public on my blog, so if you're daughter has a clue about the internet and clicks on comments in my blog, she'll see yours.
Thanks for clicking in.
Just ask her to introduce herself to me
It would be akin to asking her to sing the national anthem at the ASU game. When it comes to initiating a conversation with a Professor, shy Freshman coeds are an unlikely bet. I'm already browsing through the Macy's catalogue for her recompense for this discussion.
A
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