Making Your Own Sense

Reflections on maths, learning and maths learning support, by David K Butler

Tag: language

  • Quick Iggle Piggle! Catch Makka Pakka’s Og-Pog before it hits the Ninky Nonk!

    The CLPD head administrator Cathy told me a story the other day about an experience she had on the train: She was sitting opposite a pair of students, and one was helping the other prepare for a test. The first student was reading out words from a stack of cards and the second was trying to correctly say what they mean. After listening to this for a while, Cathy leaned over and asked what it was they were studying. The students said “pure maths”.

    This completely surprised Cathy, because not one word they had said in all that time seemed to be related to maths in any way, and some of them she had never even heard before. Now Cathy has worked in many different areas in her life, many of which were in academic institutions, not to mention her own experience with maths in the past. So it was quite a shock to her that she had never heard these words associated with maths before. “It was like a completely different language,” she said.

    My response to this statement was, “Quick Iggle Piggle! Catch Makka Pakka’s Og-Pog before it hits the Ninky Nonk!” And Cathy immediately knew what I was talking about because she, like me, has a young daughter, and therefore watches ABC2 rather a lot.

    You, however, may not regognise or attach any meaning to any of the words in that sentence at all. The question is: do you feel like an idiot for not knowing what I’m talking about? Of course not – it’s just that you happen to have never seen the TV show “In the Night Garden”.

    So why do so many people admit to feeling stupid for not knowing specialised maths words? If you happen never to have come across that particular area of maths in your life up till now, that doesn’t make you an idiot. It just means you’ve never come across that area of maths in your life up till now.

    If you feel stupid when you hear someone using unfamiliar words, just think of a phrase from some other area if life or learning where you’re pretty sure the other person won’t know any of the words. (Such as, “Quick Iggle Piggle! Catch Makka Pakka’s Og-Pog before it hits the Ninky Nonk!”)

  • Very Unique

    I often hear that the phrase “very unique” is not a correct thing to say. The explanation is that the word unique means “there is nothing else like it” and as such is already an absolute. So there’s no grades of unique: something is either unique or it’s not – there is nothing else like it or there is someting like it. This is a good explanation, so I agree we shouldn’t use the phrase “very unique”.

    But here’s the big problem: what are we supposed to use instead? What if you want to say something is unique, but add some strength to your statement? It’s all well and good to tell me what I can’t say, but perhaps you could also tell me what I can say?

    And, as always, it makes me think of my own teaching. How often do I tell students not to do something, with all the excellent reasons why it’s a bad idea, only to leave out the important part of telling them what to do instead?

    As a student, this has been done to me a lot when writing proofs. The lecturer could often tell me that what I have written is not correct or understandable, but usually did not think to (or know how to) tell me how to find a correct or more understandable way to write it. I hope I have the presence of mind not to leave students with this frustration – because it is damned frustrating!

    PS: I think a good alternative might be “truly unique”.