Metaphors are recognized as bridging scientists' challenges in communication with the public. In mathematics, however, which often involves abstract concepts and relations, less attention has been paid to the role of metaphors in public communication. In this article we examine the metaphors appearing in the discourse of 10 mathematicians in five…

Media play an important role in young people's lives as an agent of socialization, both generally and with regard to mathematics. To understand the mathematics-related messages disseminated to young people via popular media, we analyzed portrayals of mathematics and mathematicians in over 40 media examples (television shows, movies, websites,…

This article describes the authors' use of three game shows--"Survivor," "The Biggest Loser," and "Deal or No Deal?"--to determine to what degree students engaged in mathematical thinking: specializing, conjecturing, generalizing, and convincing (Burton, 1984). Student responses to the task of creating winning strategies to these shows were…

Ubiquitous learning receives much attention in these few years due to its wide spectrum of applications, such as the T-learning application. The learner can use mobile devices to watch the digital TV based course content, and thus, the T-learning provides the ubiquitous learning environment. However, in real-world data broadcast environments, the…

This paper describes an active learning game that addresses different motivational styles including intrinsic, social, achievement, and instrumental. The game is loosely based on the CBS television series Survivor and involves breaking the class into student teams (tribes) and allowing them to compete at solving chemical engineering problems. In…