Comments of FLM 1-1 (the first issue of the journal)

Table of Contents:

The first article in the table of contents is titled “About Geometry” and the second article is titled “The Foundations of Geometry”.  While the rest of the articles appear to be about different topics in mathematics education, I have to wonder if all of them are viewed through a geometrical lens.  What I mean by this is that I wonder if all of the articles are framed around the subject of teaching geometry.   For example, one of the other articles is titled “The Stereotyped Nature of School Word Problems”, and I wonder if this article discusses geometrical word problems or just something about geometry in general.

The only article that gives me any insight about a particular age group is the one titled “The Multiplication Table:  To Be Memorized or Mastered?”  Since multiplication is taught at the elementary level, this title leads me to believe that this article will discuss younger children.  All of the other articles do not give any insight about age groups though.

The Articles:

Most of the articles have some sort of illustration, chart, or graph, and most of them range in length from four pages to nine pages (including references).  It is hard to say a general statement about if there are a lot of references cited about the journal as a whole because some articles have at least a whole column of references and others have no references.  All of the articles are in English. 

The article I find most interesting is titled “Two Cubes”.  I find it interesting because it is only one page long with most of the page being filled by an image of two cubes overlapping.  There is a short paragraph and a caption for the image, but no other writing.  It is strange to me that this can even be considered an article.

There are three articles out of nine total that have subheadings.  One of them has the typical subheadings I would think of where all of the information is chunked into about seven different sections, which seem to be in sequential order of explaining a thought/concept.  The other two articles have very few subheadings in them, which makes me wonder why subheadings were even used at all for these particular articles.  For example, one of these articles only has the subheading of “Postscript” and nothing else.  It seems strange to me to only have one subheading.


The Issue as a Whole:
The front cover has an image of a tessellation, and there is an explanation about this particular image on the table of contents page.  Maybe they used an image of a tessellation since the issue might be framed about geometry?  The back cover has a space where annotations can be made about the information in the articles.

The material on the inside of the front cover summarizes the purpose of the journal.  It also gives information about when the journal is published and how to get a subscription.  On the inside of the back cover there is suggestions to writers who might submit an article for publishing.

There is no material between the articles, which I find interesting because I am use to reading journals where each article takes up an exact amount of pages.  This journal is not like that.  An article might take up four and a half pages, and another one might start where that one finishes.  Maybe they are interested in conserving paper or only want the journal to be a certain length each time?

I am not sure what “author identifications” means.  I do not see a particular spot in the journal where the authors are identified in any other way other than listing their names.  By looking at their names, they all seem to be from North America.