June, 2003
BACK TO CONTENTSTo: All Dr. Math Doctors From: Ian Underwood Subject: Ask Dr. Math in June Hi Math Doctors, In June, more than 40 math doctors combined to answer a phenomenal 65% of the nearly 5000 questions that we received. (We averaged 163 questions and 106 answers per day.) Special thanks go to the following: Avg/ day 20 | | | | Peterson | 15 | | | | | 10 | | | | Roy | 5 | Anthony, Douglas, Fenton | Jerry, Rick | Dotty, George, Greenie, Jacques, Rob, Robert, Tom | Shawn, Wilkinson | Achilles, Gareth, Hans, Jaffee, Jeremiah, Mike, Mitteldorf, Pat, Paul, Pete, Samus, Schwa, White / 1/ | Aileen, Ameis, Cannon, Chita, Edwin, Floor, Marshall, wk | Nemo, Pepper Welcome to Doctor Cannon! Selected Answers to Common Questions ------------------------------------ There is a new link at the top of the FAQ page: Selected answers to common questions http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/sets/select/ Following the link will take you to a page with about 100 links in about a dozen categories. Each link leads to a collection of answers to a particular kind of question that comes up often enough that we've answered it a number of times, in a number of different ways. Our archivist, Dr. Sarah, has been collecting these, and encourages you to highlight answers that you'd like to see grouped together in this kind of resource. You can do that in a memo (put the word 'archivist' in the title), or by sending email to dr.math-arch@mathforum.org I encourage you to take a few moments to at least look over the list, since sending a patient to one of these collections will often be more helpful than simply citing a single answer from the archive. (One of our greatest strengths is that we approach questions from lots of different directions. These collections play to that strength.) New 'Ask' Pages --------------- In February, we redesigned the series of pages leading up to the page where patients submit their questions. In June, we did it again, in an attempt to try to present the major points (please check the archives, don't ask us to do your homework, and so on) in a way that wouldn't encourage people to just start looking around for the 'Continue' button. As always, it's _your_ site, so any feedback on the content or form of the pages is more than welcome. I'm especially interested in any perceptions you might have about whether the quality of the questions being asked has been affected by the change (e.g., whether patients seem to be more or less inclined to include useful information in the Difficulties and Thoughts sections of the submission form). Secure Talk Area ---------------- The Dr. Math Talk area, http://mathforum.org/discuss/dr.math-talk/ is now password-protected, so we shouldn't have to deal with outsiders dropping in with homework questions. Please let me know if you have any problems accessing it. That's it for now! Go forth, be fruitful, and teach kids to multiply... Dr. Ian Attending Physician Ask Dr. Math