The Monthly Two Cents - June & July 2024 Edition
What Have I Been Up To?
June was the last month of school. I got to supervise prom and hand out an award at graduation. It was emotional to witness students graduate. It’s rewarding to receive letters from students, or their parents thanking you for your impact.
The Oilers lost in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final. Check out my video on why they should have won the cup.
Kayla and I got married on July 4th. You can read about our hindsight thoughts here. In short, it was the best day of my life. Our honeymoon consisted of attending three Bluesfest concerts and going to Iceland for two weeks. We’re also going up north for a week in August to celebrate our wedding with people who couldn’t make the trip to Ottawa. We saw Nickelback, Mount Joy, and Maroon 5 in concert. To my surprise, Maroon 5 was my favourite concert. Iceland was awesome. I’m glad we went on a more active trip like Iceland given my hip osteoarthritis. As you can see below, most people couldn’t do what we did during the trip in their sixties. This is why it makes sense to front-load our experiences to our younger selves.
Speaking of the hip, I met with my surgeon 8 months post-surgery. We decided it wasn’t worth doing the arthroscopy on the other hip. The next step is hip resurfacing (partial hip replacement) followed by a total hip replacement later. I’ll do my best to delay these progressions as long as possible given that I’m still relatively young.
I’m seriously considering pursuing a PhD with a focus on psychometric theory. As a result, most of my summer projects align with this goal. I’m about halfway through the Statistician with R career track on DataCamp. I’m learning a ton about Standards-Based Grading and am working to implement it in my MDM4U course this upcoming school year. I also decided to rebuild my stats notes from scratch to incorporate everything I’ve learned from teaching MDM4U three times. I consolidated my mental models relating to teaching. You can check out the two articles below.
Two Cents
Check out this randomized controlled trial on intermittent fasting. Here’s the author’s conclusion: “In the setting of isocaloric eating, [Time-restricted eating (TRE)] did not decrease weight or improve glucose homeostasis relative to a [usual eating pattern (UEP)], suggesting that any effects of TRE on weight in prior studies may be due to reductions in caloric intake.” In other words, the potential benefits of intermittent fasting occur because people tend to eat fewer calories. It relates to Peter Attia’s concept of the three levers mentioned in his book Outlive and might contradict some of the claims made by Satchin Panda on the Huberman Lab podcast.
My favourite podcast app has some new cool features. You can import YouTube videos and upload audio files, the AI features now work with 10 languages, and you can finally listen to podcasts directly on your Apple Watch and capture insights on the go. You can watch my video to see how I use the Snipd app.
Check out Brian Poncy's two appearances (Ep. 29 & Ep. 30) on the Chalk & Talk podcast. His definition of conceptual understanding and his instructional hierarchy were particularly enlightening.
My definition is conceptual understanding is demonstrated when students have the necessary declarative facts needed to solve the problem, can accurately and explicitly state the procedures needed to complete the problem, can explain when, how, and why to implement each step required to solve the problem.
Brian Poncy - Episode 30
On May 30, 2024, the Minister of Education announced that the Mathematics Proficiency Test (MPT) will be reinstated as a certification requirement for teachers in Ontario as of February 1, 2025. - OCT
The Math Proficiency Test (MPT) is back!!! Ontario teachers have to pass a math test to get their certificate. I’ve created the following FREE resources to help teachers prepare for the test. Please share with any teacher you know.
YouTube playlist with every problem solved!
August is the perfect time to learn new skills before the start of the school year. The first one hundred people to click this link will get access to my Desmos online course for FREE!
Books Read This Month
There’s one more chapter I want to read from the Active Inference textbook. I plan to summarize my insights in an article. I skipped the super technical chapters as I’m only interested in the broad principles.
I’m still reading The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe. This is a fun read that should be part of our school curriculum.
I started reading Determined by Robert Sapolsky. I skipped a few chapters, but the book is thrilling so far.
I started reading A Mathematician’s Apology by G.H. Hardy. It’s a short read on the beauty of mathematics and the creative process. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this book to a general audience.
I crushed Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon. It’s a short and easy read. It feels great to read easy books occasionally. The book motivated me to double down on the creation process which was my big insight from the last newsletter.
I finished reading Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned by Kenneth O. Stanley and Joel Lehman. The main idea of this book is great and paradigm-shifting. However, the book is repetitive, and the authors extrapolate too far at times.
Follow my reading journey on Goodreads and catch my podcast insights on Snipd. Both sync seamlessly with Readwise, my go-to for spaced repetition and daily note reviews. Check out my all-time favourite books.