#Admin - Math Fact-orials 2.0!

Hey all,

The editing is done, the formatting finished, the transformation complete!

New content will be arriving today and I'm looking forward to posting it up using my new formatting system.

Something you'll notice is the hashtag-ed subjects at the top of the page - the subject line of each post will have at least one tag so that you can (more) easily navigate to content you want to see and avoid anything that will give you math-mares.

I've found a great online graphing calculator at https://www.desmos.com/calculator and so where I can graph, I will (with this and the math formatter, algebra will be much much easier to do).

Which brings me to the links at the top of the page - there's the one for going to my Facebook page (the blog's embassy at Facebook, if you will...) and then links to the tools that I reach for in making the blog - an online set of calculators at www.calculatorsoup.com and also the equation editor I'm using at www.codecogs.com. All of these enable me to bring better quality content to the blog.

And as always, your questions and comments drive the blog forward. It's like a symbiotic relationship - you help me by asking questions, I help you by providing answers. Win Win!

Parz

#Admin, #Math gif - Math gif's...

Hello all,

I'm still working my way through the blog editing process - it's moving along well although I do wish it were done already!!! - and so my answering questions is again going to be on halt today.

But I ran into this on a site I follow and just had to share.

It's from a site called... let's just use IFLScience... and it's a series of gif mini-movies they've collected and put into a single post. It's brilliant, fun, and really the closest thing to math TV out there!

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do...

https://www.iflscience.com/brain/math-gifs-will-help-you-understand-these-concepts-better-your-teacher-ever-did/all/3

#Admin - Another admin-y post...

Hello again everyone!

So it turns out the blog needs a bit more TLC before I'll be adding new content to it - things like changing the labeling system so that it's easier to find content a reader might be interested in, editing hyperlinks, cleaning up equations... there's a lot of work to be done! But in the end I hope it makes the blog more useful to anyone who swings in to read about... well... whatever it is you're looking to read about - the numbers of ways of doing things, or probability, or algebra (with an equation editor available, I can now do algebra!), or science, or an opinion piece, or household finance questions.

And so stay tuned! I don't know how long it will take to get it up and running again, but when it is going, it'll be better than ever!

#Admin - A bit of admin...

Math Fact-orials has been up and running for roughly 3 weeks and already been hitting milestones I didn't think would be possible so soon, including having nearly 1,000 page views!

I owe much of this success and exposure to two audiences: former users of Socratic.org (which is now a read-only site) and the art community of Sketchbook Skool.

Socratic.org is where I cut my teeth on answering questions online, where I found my love of all things factorial, and saw in action how topics such as budgets, household math, finance, accounting, and so many other topics that are important to people are ignored by academic math sites. One of my main goals is to bring household math into a place where people can use math as a tool and not regard it as a nightmarish exercise in frustration (I feel like I can hear people, whether consciously thinking or unconsciously feeling something like: "Please... whatever we do... whether we choose to buy the new car or lease it... don't make me figure out which one is actually better! Make the numbers stop dancing in my head!").

With that ideal in mind, I've been posting here and there about budgeting and will be adding a few more posts to that conversation. There are already a few posts about household finances and more will be forthcoming (both from me and from you - my readers!)

Sketchbook Skool's response to the post about the numbers of trade items and also the number of unique trades has been nothing short of phenomenal. A thousand and one thank you's to Aleesha, my artistic wife, the source of many of the questions on the blog, and the inspiration for the blog post about Sketchkon and who put the post onto Sketchbook Skool's Facebook page.

Looking ahead, I've found a way to satisfactorily put equations that look like equations onto the blog (thanks to latex.codecogs.com) and so that is what I'll be doing over the course of the next few days. I'm really looking forward to seeing math rendered the way it should look! 

I'll also keep on with Socratic.org Sunday throwbacks, where I'll grab questions and answers from a host of different topics that seemed to grip people's attention. This week's question will be Why Are Arteries So Much Thicker Than Veins?

I'm extremely grateful to my current, past, and future readership and I hope that as the readership grows and develops, the blog can do so alongside so that it is always meaningful and helpful. And the best way to help make that happen is to send me emails, leave comments, and ask questions! 

#Admin - Quick admin-y post...

Hey all,

First off, I'm beyond stoked that the blog has gotten more than 100 page views in a bit over a week since I started. I'm happy that people are finding the blog and hopeful it's being found useful.

On the advice of my Chief Security Officer, my Head Counsellor, my Consigliere, and someone who I'll term the Great Wise Woman (all of whom are the same person, who also answers to "my wife"), I've changed the moderation settings on the blog from Google+ to Blogger's moderation scheme. As a result, I'll get notifications of comments looking to be posted (which, for whatever reason, wasn't happening even though they should've shown up in 3 different places. At least according to "the Internet").  This is a good thing in that I can:

1. actually find out when people are posting, and
2. I'll be able to spot horrible people trying to say and do horrible things and stop them cold in their tracks! Sounds very bad-ass. I could end up being some kind of superhero, stopping trolls in their tracks! 

What that change means, though, is that for the comments there were on the blog, done under the Google+ system, they are now gone.

Grumph

And so my sincerest apologies for that (not at all happy that a little warning sign didn't pop up warning me that the existing Google+ comments would simply be deleted and not, as I'd thought would happen, be put into a queue for me to approve).

I do hope, however, that this change will allow for more comments. Under the old system, only people with a Google+ account could comment. I'm hoping the new system will create a better flow of comments and conversations.

Enough of my taking up valuable space that could be devoted to more math content!