Friday, March 13, 2009

more random acts of geeky

Today is the second Friday the 13th in a row. I asked my class (thanks to SJ's recommended site) why it happened. They all freaked out about having to think. I wanted to cry. I mean really, aren't questions like this more fun than bisecting angles?

When I was delivering mail to my fellow East Campusites this afternoon I noticed a bulletin board showing we've had 8 left handed presidents. I made a comment about saying it would be interesting to compare that percentage (18.6) to the general population (7-10). She looked at me knowingly and said "... blog post?"

It's a good thing I'm comfortable with my geekyness, because there is no hiding it.

Of course, I now feel I need to compare other world leaders handedness and add it to my stats...

***UPDATE***
I asked Boy and Girly the same question on the drive home today. It took some work, but Boy got to "because it is divisible by 7"! I lead him into why the 7 was magic, and what the pattern was, but I was very pleased that my biologicals didn't give up when it got hard. Having a math geek for a mom pays off eventually.

5 comments:

Beth said...

I've often noticed that many people who I admire are left handed. My totally untested theory is that left handed people have to learn to do so many things right-handed that they utilize more of their brains than right handed people who have it easy.

SJ said...

Ahh Beth.... this does explain why we have always clicked - I'm a lefty! And don't worry Rach, I'm so geeky I RSS feed a lefty blog!

Unknown said...

This lefty has another theory about why there are two Fridays the 13th in a row: it's because the first one was so successful, they rushed to put out a sequel.

Now that's a left-hander's reply.

Traveling Jones said...

I'm right-handed, except in sports where I'm a lefty. I was the only lefty gymnast on my team. What does that say about me and can we figure out the percentage of people who share this quirk?

And, I had a student get mad at me yesterday because I asked her to "think"; I just wanted her to refine some questions for a research paper (we're not even at writing the thing, we're just at coming up with a proposal). She was seriously whining at me about her head hurting.

Katie said...

Students need to be taught to think.

If teachers and parents explicitly teach it (lots of think alouds!) at a young age, they grow into teenagers who know the process and can muddle their way through the complexity with more confidence and less resistance.