"What if we teach about an NCLB Polyhedron, and how the muggles refused to share it, or really much of any Pentagon Math for that matter?" -- Kirby T. Urner, Oct 29, '06 [1]Old timers on math-teach may recall my sudden injection of the NCLB Polynomial, a somewhat surrealist maneuver by the standards of today's joyless political climate, what with all that dreary fearmongering and race baiting that goes on (racist: someone who believes in races).
That went over like a lead balloon. I got only a few reports back of any ripple-effects in the blogosphere, let alone classrooms, although I'm used to having some of my best ideas ripped off without attribution (s'ok, I've got more where those came from).
So now, so close to the election, it's time to up the ante with an NCLB Polyhedron (different type math object from a Polynomial).
Some of you snarkies might've guessed that'd be the Pentagonal Dodecahedron but you'd be wrong. I'm going with the Rhombic Triacontahedron for several reasons:
- it's home base for the T modules (recursive sister of A & B modules)
- it embeds the pentagonal dodeca, one of the Platonic High Five, as short face diagonals (rhombs are diamonds)
- it also embeds the icosahedron (long diagonals), which is more structurally stable, being all triangles 'n all, and also a High Fiver
- [... your reason goes here ...]
- we need more focus on the Rhombic Dodecahedron (one of Kepler's favorites) and rhomb rhymes with rhomb
The NCLB Polynomial, as you recall, was x**2 - x - 1, which, set equal to zero, solves as one plus or minus the second root of five all over two.[2] And that's Phi Country folks, like the land o' Marlborough but without all the cigs ("I miss my lung Bob"[3]), a place for rugged individualism, just like our Python Nation (partially overlapping for sure (did I mention I was its Minister of Education once?)). Welcome to our Wild West.
And Phi is all about Five-Fold Symmetry, rotationally speaking, which is where the NCLB Polyhedron comes in, all part of the same package.
Rhombic Triacontahedron by Ken G. Brown
Now who could deny this'd be wholesome fare for USA kidnicks, stretching to become tomorrow's freedom-loving world game players? It's a no-brainer almost. Figurate and polyhedral numbers, flatscreen computer graphics, hexapent domicile options, horse camps in the high desert. Like of course this is Future America -- who ever doubted it?
Yet the math teachers don't share our NCLB programming, pretending NCLB is no more than a "school rule" of the kind they might easily get away with breaking. They're not really interested in substantive content, which has never been their forte (secret: many math teachers hate math).
So no sharing about Fibonacci Number convergence to Phi (Python generators good for showing this), practically nothing about Pentagon Math (108, in an underground hexapent -- anything clicking?), about Triangular and Tetrahedral number sequences (columns in Pascal's Triangle), and how all this stuff links to our Geometry of the Ages (as embedded in all kinds of USA iconography and architecture [4]).
Or maybe they do bravely share this stuff (that'd be my fond hope at least). If so, they should be loud about it, run campaigns on that basis. NCLB is so important in the fight against terrorism (bumper sticker: only stoopid people bomb (and yes, mean people still suck)).
Thanks to NCLB, our president is winning his war for Iraqi hearts and minds. Why? Because Islam was never so stoopid about geometry as most USA math teachers are, what with their dim-witted XYZ calculus and "duh wuh?" reflexes around nature's well established geometries.[5]
Thanks to NCLB, our children will face life bravely, perhaps unlike their pseudo-adult math teachers, who cower and cringe in the face of their own incompetence, now shining publicly and brightly, as from a lit up billboard -- their collective professional face in our NCLB mirror.
Kirby
Gnu Math Teacher
Portland, Oregon
More context on the Math Forum: Halloween, 2006
