Theodorewarner

Georg Alexander Pick found a useful way to determine the area of a simple polygon with integer coordinates. If i is the number of lattice points in the interior and b is the number of lattice points on the boundary, then the area is given by

There are 40 lattice points in the interior of the figure above and 12 on the boundary, so its area is 40 + 12/2 – 1 = 45.

(Thanks, Pål.)

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio completed his flip-flop on immigration today, saying he opposes a pathway to citizenship and believes the U.S. should deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants residing in the country. In a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation, Rubio told the assembled audience that allowing illegal immigrants to reside in the country would be like allowing bank robbers

A teacher in Virginia said this about her state’s standards:

“I teach in Virginia where we do not use Common core. Our standards are actually harder than common core.

“Here is the problem with both: these standards are not developmentally appropriate for children. I am teaching my LD (special ed.) students things like: order of operations (PEMDAS) and prime and composite numbers. I have found very few adults who know what composite numbers are, including West Point and Harvard grads. Do you know what a stem and leaf plot is? Do you know what a compression wave is? Do you know the difference between an expression and an equation? Do you know what an open sentence is (in math)? Can you name different rhyme schemes in poetry? Can you do MLA citations and computer powerpoints? These are 5th grade skills. I am teaching middle and high school skills to 10 year olds. Then when they have difficulties, it is my fault. Really?”