STEM in National History Day

I was interested in which National History Day themes tended to generate STEM-related or arts-related projects. I had access to the full lists of national contest entries from 2016-2018 and the lists of finalists from 2011 to 2018. This post focuses on STEM-related projects.

The number of STEM projects at the national contest and in finals varies significantly from year to year, and it seems very tied to the topic. Topics that focus on the impact of a person or event (such as "Turning Points" or "Revolution, Reaction, Reform") lend themselves to STEM topics. The most common fields for STEM projects across years are medicine, environment, and disease, with space, nuclear, and other biology topics also common. This might be because of accessible resources on those topics or earlier exposure of students to them. No NHD category consistently has the most STEM projects, but performance often has the least.

Below the fold are more details on what I found. There are some notes/disclaimers about this analysis and how I categorized projects at the end.

Winter 2018 Math Ed Links

Here's some of what I've been reading for the past few months.

NHD 2017-18: Conflict and Compromise

Here are some arts and STEM topics ideas for this year's NHD theme! I expect it to be a pretty low year for both arts and STEM projects; "Conflict and Compromise" isn't the easiest theme for either one. I'll be adding to this post for the next month or so.

STEM

-- The War of Currents (AC vs DC current). This has had a winner to an extent, but there are a lot of ways in which we still use each of AC and DC current today, so this does feel like it involved a compromise to me.
-- Wave-Particle Duality. I feel a little odd calling this a compromise, but the answer to "Is light a wave or a particle?" is well, yes. It took us a while to figure that out, and the history of the experiments and discussions that finally led us to the current model is really interesting.
-- Galileo. This was recommended in the theme book, maybe because Galileo compromised his values in recanting, maybe because he had earlier come to a compromise with the church (and then in the church's eyes crossed the agreed upon line). I'm hesitant to strongly recommend this topic because of its familiarity and applicability to a wide range of NHD themes.
-- Ethics of Human Subject Research. This is pretty broad, but it's a subject based on compromise. Biomedical and behavioral research is often very valuable, but we need to do it in a way that is safe and respectful of the people involved as research subjects. Key documents to consider: the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Helsinki, the Belmont Report, the National Research Act of 1974.
-- Munsell Color System. This paper argues that Albert Henry Munsell's system of describing color was a compromise that largely resolved a conflict around color science. It might be difficult to use this paper as a starting point; either it makes the argument you want to make, or you effectively argue against it. But this seemed interesting, so I wanted to throw it in.
-- Endangered Species Act. The ESA has existed in several forms and has been amended a number of times, generally seeking compromise between industry and protection of species.
-- Echo Park Dam and Glen Canyon Dam. Glen Canyon Dam was the compromise after there was controversy about the proposed Echo Park Dam, which was on protected land. (There are also similar other projects that you could look at; I found an Army document about development of the Snake River titled "Controversy, Conflict, and Compromise: A History of the Lower Snake River Development.")
-- Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. This park includes less area than originally planned because of Native American (especially Ojibwe) activism advocating for their land rights. There are probably other cases of preservation or conservation movements and Native American land rights coming into conflict that you could look for.
-- Cooperative Game Theory. So this is a kind of sideways take on the topic, but cooperative game theory is a mathematical field founded on ideas of conflict and compromise. Looking at its history (and in particular the early work of John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern) would be really cool and, I think, unique.

Arts

-- Ballet in the early Soviet Union. In the 1920s, there was a lot of discussion in the Soviet Union around ballet as an art. It had a strong history in Russia, but it was tied heavily to the nobility and especially to the tsars. It was virtuoso and didn't tell stories of the common people... but the classical, Imperial-era ballets still drew huge crowds. I think one could do a good project about that conflict and how the leadership eventually reconciled ballet with socialist ideals. Book recommendations: Swans of the Kremlin, Apollo's Angels, Bolshoi Confidential.
-- An Actors or Writers Guild strike; there have been several large ones in the US over the past century. Most labor negotiations involve a lot of conflict and compromise, and some of these have had major impacts on the affected industries. (I'd recommend against the Disney animators' strike because of the minimal compromise involved.)
-- Vietnam Veterans' Memorial. Maya Lin's design for the memorial was controversial, and more traditional memorial elements were added to the plans as a compromise.
-- Rodgers and Hammerstein. This is suggested in the theme book, and the reasoning isn't entirely clear, but here's my best guess. Several R&H shows have liberal political messages but don't fully commit to them. (South Pacific has a good deal of uncondemned Orientalism while also addressing racism and interracial marriage, for example.) Robert Gordon's The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim Studies definitely refers to this as a compromise.

Math Ed Link Dump, Jan-Feb 2017

Basic Stats Activity + Impossible Problem
This is a cool mean/median/mode exercise generally, and I liked the accidental impossible problem and how it was handled.

Francis Su's Joint Meetings Keynote
This talk has gotten a lot of attention, both at JMM and well after. I didn't go see this due to timing of another session I needed to be in, but please read this. There are some parts of it that I disagree with (largely related to the connection of mathematics with some of the virtues), but many of the messages and stories are important.

New AMS Blog: Inclusion-Exclusion
Related to the above: this blog exists now, and I'm glad it does.

Daily Routine Collections
These are links to things like Number Talks, Visual Patterns, Which One Doesn't Belong, etc. I knew about most of these individually, but this is a place where they all live together! This link is mostly here so that I can find it in the future.

Online Geoboard!
Geoboards are awesome, so I was excited to discover an online geoboard. Simon Gregg made a couple of cool Which One Doesn't Belong sets with this, but obviously there are so many different things you can do with a geoboard. (And I started thinking about non-WODB properties of the shapes he made for his WODB sets, so those are flexible, too!)

Math and Education Links

Here's some of what I've been reading over the past few months!

DeanDad on active learning.
I took an inquiry-based (pretty strictly Moore Method) course the semester that I was in Budapest, and I remember the professor telling us that any course that was very inquiry-based needed to be opt-in. He'd taught IBL Calculus at UChicago, where it was one of several options; it wouldn't have worked if it had been the only choice (even with the right class sizes). Some of that is because of what DeanDad talks about here. Active learning can be really empowering (as Francis Su talked about at the IBL conference in August), but it can also feel like abandonment, and I've seen it go both ways.

Modeling as creative science.
This is an article from earlier this year that Rhett Allain reposted this fall. After reading him for a few years, getting more experience doing mathematical modeling, and going to a conference that focused on using and teaching modeling in the classroom, I pretty much agree with Allain's focus on models. This particular post is about having students do the modeling work, which is really important; I also agree with him that there's great value in presenting information as models.

Using Student-Generated Examples.
This reminded me a lot of some of the problems that were assigned in my real analysis class, except there so often there was one type of intended example, and here that changes a lot by question (and variety is part of the point). What kinds of math classes does this fit into well? It seems natural for thinking about patterns and functions.

Ben Orlin does interesting things to the high school math curriculum.
I have an immediate adverse reaction to the Utility Belt Curriculum, and I'm not quite sure why. I love the Go Forth and Prosper Curriculum and would love teaching any of the 11th/12th grade courses, but as Orlin mentions, it's not feasible in most schools. I don't find Four Square Meals particularly appealing, partially because I don't really understand doing AP Calc AB and BC in two years, so I don't like the rationale. (Though yes please to it being normal for everyone to get decent stats ed.) I like the Verb-Powered Curriculum, though not doing some calc in the modeling class or circling back to modeling in the class that involves calc seems unfortunate. There's a ton of modeling that you can do without calculus, obviously, but so many modeling possibilities open with calculus.

Math with primary sources.
Could be good for integrating into math courses, for math history courses, or for history projects related to math topics.

Some More Math Links

Jeremy Kun's Habits of Highly Mathematical People.
He doesn't actually spend a ton of time on how the math we do in the classroom teaches the habits/skills he mentions; he's mostly defining and discussing examples of these skills in mathematical people. It's still pretty fascinating and useful.

Mark Chubb on Closing a Lesson
This post includes links to interesting things about orchestrating math discussion, and in general it talks about some things I've been thinking about (and struggling with) recently

Francis Su's Freedom Through Inquiry
I was fortunate enough to be at the IBL conference where Francis Su gave this speech, and it's so good. I love the humor of parts of it ("This set's closed, this set's open, this one's neither, this one's clopen!"), but Su also says so many important things about freedom in learning and how inquiry allows this freedom.

Dylan Kane on Lecturing
I'd never heard the bit about lecturing in MS/HS because in HS/college there would be lectures, but I agree with the reasons Kane lists to not use this excuse. My favorite part of the post, though, is the bit about not being sure how to respond when asked if he lectures, with these two quotes:
"Based on that knowledge I may choose to deliver some explicit instruction. Maybe for two minutes at a time, maybe for twenty."
"There’s no magic bullet, no one right answer. That intellectual work of figuring out what is going to work tomorrow for my students is probably my favorite part of the job."


Joshua Bowman on Expectations of an Upper-Level Math Class
This is mostly an excerpt from Bowman's analysis syllabus, setting up expectations from which specifications for grading will be taken. I really like the idea of explicitly basing an upper-level course around the ideas of definition, theorem, proof, and community. (I love that he includes community because it's so important.)

Themed AP Lang and Comp: Mathematics

The Advanced Placement English Language and Composition exam is focused on analysis and argument based on nonfiction texts, which means there's a lot of opportunity to theme the readings for a course that prepares students for the exam. I'll write about a few different themes; this post focuses on a mathematics theme.

The key components of a class preparing students for the AP Lang & Comp exam are:

• writing narrative, expository, analytical, and argumentative essays
• writing multiple drafts of essays
• some informal writing (journaling, etc.)
• writing assignments based on a variety of prose styles & genres
• nonfiction readings of a variety of types (essays, journalism, political writing, science or nature writing, biography, diaries, history, criticism, etc.)
• graphic/visual image analysis
• citing sources

With those components in mind, here is an example set of readings for a math themed class. I tried to assemble a set of readings that could fit together coherently while covering different types of writing and topics within mathematics.