Today’s question is not a good question. It’s a bad question. But sometimes a bad question can become a good one. This one leads first to a discussion of units, then to all sorts of calculus. Here’s the question a teacher sent me this week taken from his textbook: The normal monthly rainfall at the…
Another of my favorite questions from past AP exams is from 2000 question AB 4. If memory serves it is the first of what became known as an “In-out” question. An “In-out” question has two rates that are working in opposite ways, one filling a tank and the other draining it. In subsequent years we…
Continuing my occasional series of some of my favorite teaching questions, today we look at the 1998 AP Calculus exam question 2. This question appeared on both the AB and BC exams. I use this problem to illustrate two very different questions that come up almost every time I lead a workshop or an AP Summer…
A word before we look at one of my favorite AP exam questions, I put some of my presentations in a new page. Look under the “Resources” tab above, and you will see a new page named “Presentations.” There are PowerPoint slides and the accompanying handouts from some talks I’ve given in the last few…
Teaching Calculus 