This is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English EducationReport.
Many students and teachers of mathematics visit a Web siteprovided by Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Thesite is called the Math Forum at Drexel. The address ismathforum.org. The site says it receives about four-million visits amonth from people around the world. Some services requiremembership. But other materials are free of charge.
The Math Forum at Drexel includes an Internet MathematicsLibrary. This is a library that collects and organizes thousands ofother Web sites related to math. Another area is called Ask DoctorMath. Visitors can ask an expert a question at any level.
A number of experts give theirtime to choose and answer interesting problems. More thanfive-thousand questions-and-answers are organized by subject andlevel. Visitors can also search by terms.
Ask Doctor Math contains a page of almost fifty commonly askedquestions. For example, it explains how to make a Pascal's Triangle.Mathematician, scientist and thinker Blaise Pascal developed thistriangle made of numbers in the seventeenth century. It is used inalgebra and to find combinations in probability.
Another page at the Math Forum at Drexel is called ClassicProblems. For example: In a family with two children, if one childis a boy, what are the chances that the other child is a girl? Readyfor the answer? The answer is ... two-thirds. Why two-thirds? Theexample shows what is called a conditional probability tree toexplain the answer.
Another part of the site is called Teacher2Teacher. This areapermits math educators to share opinions, suggestions and issues.They trade ideas for classroom activities and teaching methods.Master teachers answer questions and offer suggestions. Theseteachers have won top awards for their teaching of mathematics.
And there is a Teacher Exchange area. Math teachers around theworld can share their own materials. For example, there arematerials by Suzanne Alejandre, a well-known middle school mathteacher in the United States. She has prepared lessons andactivities designed mainly for students between the ages of elevenand fifteen.
Again, the address of the Math Forum at Drexel is mathforum.org.
This VOA Special English Education Report was written by JerilynWatson. I'm Steve Ember.