While the government, public authorities and private sectors have taken a few noticeable steps to bring more and more kids to school and increase academic participation, yet a quality in education and pedagogical developments have remained an elusive goal. A number of significant reasons such as poor infrastructure, inadequate number of teachers, student absenteeism, the high number of dropouts, gender disparities, and unsupportive environment have crippled our classrooms.
View More Education for all: A comprehensive blueprint for bringing the change that India needsCategory: Maths
What learning Maths taught me
Mathematics has this uncanny ability to polarise its audience — you either love the subject or you hate it. Notwithstanding the gender biases towards Maths, I have seen several of my colleagues going berserk around the time there was a Maths test, and it reached some feverish levels during those…
View More What learning Maths taught meThe 22nd bead
A quiet lounge at the Delhi airport, Terminal 2. I was strolling around waiting for GoAir to open their counters for check in. I was in a contemplative state. When the counters opened, I checked in and proceeded to the security check points. Here I had to remove my irrationality…
View More The 22nd beadMathematical musings in art
Today during dance practice, I made a mistake. While keeping the beat for a song, I had switched from chaturashra Eka taaLa to aadi taaLa inadvertently. At the end of the song, I was surprised to find that I had not completed the taaLa at the correct position. Later I…
View More Mathematical musings in artOf rice in salt and Pythagoras in a paddy field
Let me narrate two stories from the recent experience of science and maths in action. Story 1: In the last couple of months, on four different occasions, I observed something curious in restaurants. I found rice grains in the salt shakers. I hadn’t come across this earlier. Is it a…
View More Of rice in salt and Pythagoras in a paddy fieldFish can’t fly and birds can’t swim
As kids we have always had our very own mathematical tricks, these tricks were tucked away in our rough notes and last pages of our textbooks.To name a few – Magic square, tables of number 9 and the list just goes on. As an example, let me show you a…
View More Fish can’t fly and birds can’t swimAmusement in Learning
“Given a round tea-cake of some 5 inches across, and two persons of moderate appetite to eat it, in what way should it be cut so as to leave a minimum of exposed surface to become dry?” Coming across this problem just prior to Christmas in 1906, eminent statistician and…
View More Amusement in Learning