Math Immersion Month Day 1: My family on learning to love math

My dad and step-mom read my math report cards from 20 years ago, share their definitions of math, and offer their support as I begin my experiment to learn about math for a month and document it with daily videos! (This is also Daily Learning Vlog #62!)

Unfortunately, I also completely failed at my goals for today because of my anxiety. Argh! And I haven’t even confronted my math anxiety yet! But like I said in the video for today, it’s all good. Tomorrow I have a fresh start. I’ll just keep trying.

In the meantime, I’m still trying to decide how exactly to use this blog… Today a friend of mine told me about how Richard Feynman kept a notebook titled “Notebook of Things I Don’t Know About” (see it cited in Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman and Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently).

That’s exactly what my daily learning video project is all about: exploring what I don’t know in order to motivate myself to learn more! I like the way Cal Newport describes “The Feynman Notebook Method”, and it makes me think that perhaps I should experiment with more ways to track my learning process in a “concrete form”. A video is great, a blog post is great, but maybe I should try a hand-written notebook or return to using sticky notes like I did in my first videos.

What if I covered an entire wall of my livingroom with questions on sticky notes? I could call it The Wall of Questions! (Maybe the Wall of Answers would be in the kitchen?)

Anyway, for now this blog will just serve as a brain dump. But let me know if you have any ideas!