| Contributed by
"Vlorbik" aka Owen Thomas
Edward James Olmos plays Jaime Escalante, "a real-life math teacher in East L.A.. This is
really unique. The hero's heroism consists in teaching mathematics! Obviously, I've gotta love this one. So did a lot of
other people. Olmos got an Oscar nomination. I learned how to calculate multiples of nine on my fingers. |
I know its hard to believe, but despite the fact that I've been teaching calculus and talking about mathematical fiction for years, I have only seen this movie for this first time this month (September 2000). Anyway, I'm really glad that I did see it because I do think about it now when I teach. (Mostly I think about how I wish I could get my students to work that hard!) My favorite part, though, was actually just the description on the back of the box that the videotape came in! It said that Escalante "dares to take on a foe so terrible that few have dared to challenge it: the advanced placement calculus exam!" And he does!
| Contributed by
Carole Del Vecchio
I try to show this movie to my students every year. This year, my Calculus class had just finished learning about integrals and they especially liked looking at the problems written on the board and/or overhead projector.
They had not learned about Integration by Parts yet and they were wondering about Mr. Escalante's "tic-tac-toe" shortcut for integrating x^2 sin x dx. Have you ever heard of this shortcut and if so, what is the significance of the (+) (-) (+) in the right column?
Thank you.
Carole
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