Award-winning cartoonist Gene Luen Yang (AMERICAN BORN CHINESE) leads a double life: he’s a teacher as well as a ‘toonist. But he puts both skills to use in this edu-comic titled FACTORING WITH MR. YANG AND MOSLEY THE ALIEN, which covers factoring, a basic skill in algebra that involves breaking down numbers into their components.
Confession: We did okay with the first coupla lessons, but when it got to that Trinomial Expression stuff we just quietly went back to playing Wesnoth.
On the plus side, we are now totally up for using expressions like “When you factor that in…” and “Among the many factors affecting this are…” because now we can sound authentic!
That’s awesome, kudos to Gene!
‘Every number can be “broken up” into its factors.’
I was all set to make a snarky comment about how prime numbers can’t be “broken up,” but I followed the link and read the following panel. (A prime number’s factors are correctly explained; “broken up” is just not the best analogy in this case.)
So, internet snark avoided by further research instead of immediate comment.
Do NOT mess with a catholic high school teacher! Detention will be spent solving 5×7 matrices. (The ultimate tool for solving linear equations.) In-school suspension consists of solving physics word problems.
(This is also part of his Masters project! http://www.humblecomics.com/comicsedu/
So he’s also educating the educators!)
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