New Year type post

Some house-cleaning for the new year:

• I have done a new blogroll shuffle; three high school teachers (Sam Shah, Jason Buell, Daniel Schneider), three college-level bloggers (Robert Talbert, Peter Smith, Mike Croucher), and one “idler’s miscellany of compendious amusements” (Futility Closet). The old Mathematics links in my sidebar have now been moved to my Annotated Blogroll. Please note the disclaimer that this is only a small selection out of many good blogs.
• I’m working on a new video; feedback on my last one (Adding Logarithms with Austin Underhill, the Friendly Space Whale) would still be welcome.
• Speaking of feedback, I do plan on posting answers to the conceptual counting test at some point but only if some more brave souls attempt answers (thanks to Robert Hansen for having a go; emailing me is fine if you’re sheepish).
• The Visual Algebra book project is still alive, but I’m working on something smaller first (a novella, so to speak) as a test case that should be finished much earlier.
• While I’m going to have radio silence from now until my MEAD Conference talk, here’s a recompile of my last Queue of Planned Posts, with finished stuff removed and new stuff added. Let me know if you want something sooner rather than later.

  Ancient math history:
  What’s the earliest mathematical artifact? (part 3)
  What’s the earliest mathematical artifact? (part 4)
  On the Ancient Egyptian Value of Pi redux (Do the Pyramids encode pi?)
  On the Ancient Babylonian Value of Pi redux (more information and scans from a tablet)
  On the Ancient Phoenician (Bible) Value of Pi

  Educational futurism:
  Textbooks of the future
  Classrooms of the future

  Logic:
  On alien logic [How one might think without AND, OR, or NOT.]
  Post’s lattice
  Set theory in paraconsistent logic

  Lesson plans:
  Teaching logarithms with Stevens’ Power Law [psychology experiment]
  Doing real mathematical research with high school students

  Psychology:
  Could mnemotechnics be useful in education? (These are the memory tricks used by folks at the World Memory Championship; failed attempts to reform education with them date back to the 19th century.)

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