Minciu Sodas

Minciu Sodas is an online laboratory for serving and organizing independent thinkers.

Andrius Kulikauskas is founder and Direktorius. He has a Ph.D. in mathematics and (as of December 2008) is teaching algebra at American University in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Edward Cherlin leads the Earth Treasury working group at Minciu Sodas.

Andrius's letter to Edward, December 16, 2008

Edward,

Yes! Please add my interest, and that of our Minciu Sodas laboratory http://www.ms.lt, to participate in your textbook project. I would gladly work for you or others to write open source textbooks in math, philosophy, fighting peacefully or other subjects. I alert others at our lab who might like to write textbooks.

This semester I've been teaching algebra from my own notes: http://www.worknets.org/upload/AndriusKulikauskas/precalculus.pdf which are for teaching math based on the deep ideas behind it. I would like to write a short book based on that approach. I am thinking to call it "Classic Math Problems". Each problem would illustrate a particular idea. I would supplement the text with video and additional materials, exercises.

So, for example, I tell my students that algebra is the study of "thinking in steps". And here is a problem that teaches that. Suppose you usually buy pants in the marketplace because the department store charges one-third more. But the store is now having a sale, and everything is one-third off. Where should you buy the pants?

Quite a few people - and sophisticated people - might say that the price is now the same, for it is one-third off of one-third more. But if you think through it step by step, then you will see given x, that one-third more is 4/3 x, and 2/3 of 4/3 x is 8/9 x. So it will be cheaper at the store with the sale. For the question is "one-third of what?" This one problem is a good, self-contained point to communicate this idea. It is a sophisticated problem, but one that you can master. There are many variants, such as a stock price that goes up 1/3 and down 1/4, or a tax and a rebate. And if you learn 20 or 30 or 50 problems like that, then you know all of algebra, or certainly the fundamentals.

Working together I'm sure we'd discover ways to support all manner of self-teaching approaches and preferences. Myself, I'd like to focus on self-learning adults (like at our lab) and I'm curious how that compares with children learning.

I'm also interested in related resources. I've organized my students into 20 teams of 4 or 5 students each. We're collecting quantities (amounts and units) for a Math Encyclopedia. Each team is working on a dimension like price, speed, distance, mass. http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?MathEncyclopedia My hope is that we'll have 1,000 or 2,000 facts in a few weeks and then can build from there.

My work and Minciu Sodas's work is in the Public Domain and it would be great if that might always be an option, if not the default, in your mission. I wish for a culture centered on ethics rather than law.

Please also know that you can participate at the COMMUNIA meetings in Europe through our lab. We're a member and we have travel money for our participants, including from the US. The next meetings are Jan 23 in Zurich, March in London and June in Turin, Italy. COMMUNIA is, I think, in need of such projects.

I should learn this week if I'm teaching here next semester.

Edward, Congratulations on your progress! Please keep us posted!