The Math Forum at Drexel

This is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English Education
Report.

Many students and teachers of mathematics visit a Web site
provided by Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The
site is called the Math Forum at Drexel. The address is
mathforum.org. The site says it receives about four-million visits a
month from people around the world. Some services require
membership. But other materials are free of charge.

The Math Forum at Drexel includes an Internet Mathematics
Library. This is a library that collects and organizes thousands of
other Web sites related to math. Another area is called Ask Doctor
Math. Visitors can ask an expert a question at any level.

A number of experts give their
time to choose and answer interesting problems. More than
five-thousand questions-and-answers are organized by subject and
level. Visitors can also search by terms.

Ask Doctor Math contains a page of almost fifty commonly asked
questions. For example, it explains how to make a Pascal's Triangle.
Mathematician, scientist and thinker Blaise Pascal developed this
triangle made of numbers in the seventeenth century. It is used in
algebra and to find combinations in probability.

Another page at the Math Forum at Drexel is called Classic
Problems. For example: In a family with two children, if one child
is a boy, what are the chances that the other child is a girl? Ready
for the answer? The answer is ... two-thirds. Why two-thirds? The
example shows what is called a conditional probability tree to
explain the answer.

Another part of the site is called Teacher2Teacher. This area
permits math educators to share opinions, suggestions and issues.
They trade ideas for classroom activities and teaching methods.
Master teachers answer questions and offer suggestions. These
teachers have won top awards for their teaching of mathematics.

And there is a Teacher Exchange area. Math teachers around the
world can share their own materials. For example, there are
materials by Suzanne Alejandre, a well-known middle school math
teacher in the United States. She has prepared lessons and
activities designed mainly for students between the ages of eleven
and fifteen.

Again, the address of the Math Forum at Drexel is mathforum.org.

This VOA Special English Education Report was written by Jerilyn
Watson. I'm Steve Ember.