Phillips Exeter assembly talk

Apr 15, 2009 22:28

On Tuesday of last week I went to Phillips Exeter Academy (in New Hampshire). I was invited to give one of their "assembly talks," which is where the whole student body assembles in an auditorium (a rather posh one, this being Phillips Exeter and all), listens to announcements and whatever speaker they've dragged in for the day. Apparently they get a lot of alumni to give assembly talks, and during elections (it being NH) they get all the candidates to do it. But, this being Phillips Exeter, they also have a budget to get interesting speakers as well.

I gave a short talk on origami-math, and my years teaching at HCSSiM have taught me how to handle an audience of high-school kids, even if they are all wearing ties. Now they've posted on their web site a nice write-up of my visit.



The picture shows me visiting Philip Mallinson's calculus class, where we folded tangents to a parabola and saw how origami can do elementary calculus. Yes, that's me wearing a tie, because it's friggin' Exeter and nearly everyone wears a tie there. (And they were paying me, so I figured I should get decked out a bit. I was also wearing my blue faux snakeskin shoes!)

origami

Previous post Next post
Up