New approach to developmental college math

I can give a definite "YES" to these comments about math curriculum changes proposed in California by Katie Hern of Chabot College, director of the California Acceleration Project.

" A growing number of community colleges have developed an innovative new approach for students who are under-prepared for college math. It is less expensive than the traditional curriculum and significantly more effective. The innovation has been spotlighted by several national organizations focused on college completion."

Please read the complete article here:
New approach to remedial math challenged

The need for math is present in almost all areas of study, but more so in sciences, engineering, business, and mathematics. Algebra, geometry and trig skills need to be very strong for these majors.
But for English (and other languages), elementary education, art or music majors, they usually need only a couple of college math courses. Those are usually finite math and statistics. Algebra maybe helpful, but not a must for finite math and statistics. If students are very well prepared with today's definition of pre-algebra skills then these students can be successful without college algebra, precalculus or calculus.

Super Egg in Geometry!

Super Egg - 
The upright egg was created in 1965 by a Dane, Piet Hein. 
 The 3-D  shape is a superellipse defined by the graph of the relation:

  

The ellipse is then revolved about the z-axis.    In most super eggs that you see a/b = 4/3 !  Or have you not seen one yet!.

Hein's super eggs were popular as toys in the 1960's.  The world's largest super egg can be seen outside Kelvin Hall in Glascow, Scotland, UK.  The super egg with a/b= 6/5 was used as a round-about road in Stockholm, Sweden.  Traffic flowed more fluidly with the super egg design.

You can purchase a set of super eggs on Amazon!   They were designed by Hein as salt and pepper shakers.    They will wobble a bit but do not fall over!

I gleaned this from a book you may want to consider reading at your public library.
The Math Book : from Pythagoras to the 57th dimension, 250 milestones in the history of mathematics by  Clifford A. Pickover.

Need more information about the SUPER ELLIPSE?

Learn to create your own here:

Math World at Wolfram