After 30 years of software development, David McAdams was looking for something new to do. He turned his attention to how maths is taught. Through his coursework at Utah Valley University, he learned how critical vocabulary acquisition is to all learning, and especially to maths. Math has long been regarded as its having its own language, with its own syntax and symbols. The acquisition of this language has been found to be a barrier to many students.
After the completion of his internship, Mr. McAdams finished compiling maths vocabulary words into a comprehensive dictionary, written for middle school and high school students. All Math Words Dictionary is the culmination of ten years work collecting, classifying and describing all of the words a student might encounter in their studies of algebra, geometry, and calculus. This book has over 3000 entries; more than 140 notations defined; in excess of 790 illustrations; an IPA pronunciation guide; and greater than 1400 formulas and equations.
While working on the dictionary, between playing with his grandchildren, Mr. McAdams started developing other ideas for maths literacy. The results are Numbers, What is Bigger than Anything (Infinity), Swing Sets (Set Theory), and Learning with Play Money Activity Kit.
Branching out, Mr. McAdams took a departure from tools for teaching maths, moving into the arena of pure mathematical delight. This results in two volumes of My Favourite Fractals.
While reading a book on colour names to his grandson Sawyer, he got to thinking how boring books on colour names are for adults. "What in nature," he mused, "has enough of the primary and secondary colours to teach colour names to children?" His first answer was either frogs or parrots. He created Parrot Colours, Flower Colours, and Space Colours.
Returning to maths, Mr. McAdams created a book to help children learn shapes, called Shapes. He remembered how, in his youth, he found a few printouts of geometric nets and was fascinated how they folded together into complex, 3-dimensional objects. He prepared Geometric Nets Project Book, then Geometric Nets Mega Project Book with many geometric nets to cut out and assemble.
What can one get for the maths aficionado who has everything? Mr McAdams created the books The First Million Digits of Pi, The First Million Digits of e, The Square Root of Two to One Million Digits, The First Hundred Thousand Prime Numbers.
Many young maths learners become fascinated with how maths works. Mr. McAdams wrote One Penny, Two to illustrate through a stories how fast powers of two increase with each iteration. Jerry is given a magic box. If you put a penny in it, the pennies double each day as long as none are taken out. Jerry decides he wants a dark green convertible sports car. Follow Jerry's trials as he sets his sights on his goal.