Month: February 2011

WordPress Blogging Tutorial 8 – Working with Widgets

Software Tutorials, Wordpress

A widget is a web tool that performs a specific task. It can be a clock, a daily weather news, a random quotation generator, and many others. Widgets can usually be embedded in blogs using a short code. It can be a simple HTML, a Javascript, a flash animation, or any reusable code.

The Clustermap widget located at the bottom right of Mathematics and Multimedia page is an example of a widget.  The Clustermap reveals the location of the visitors. The code of the Clustermap for Mathematics and Mutlimedia is shown below.

<a id=”clustrMapsLink” href=”http://www3.clustrmaps.com/counter/maps.php?url=http://mathandmultimedia.com/”><img style=”border:0;” title=”Locations of visitors to this page” src=”http://www3.clustrmaps.com/counter/index2.php?url=http://mathandmultimedia.com/” alt=”Locations of visitors to this page” /></a>

Some widgets are just codes that you can directly copy and paste to your website, while there are others, like Clustermap, where you have to register your website or blog first, before you will be given the widget code.

Widgets in WordPress

To embed a widget in WordPress, go to your Dashboard and select Widget from the Appearance panel.  You will see a list of available widgets. Drag the widgets of your choice to your side bar. Non-Wordpress widgets can be embedded using the Text widget.  Drag the text widget to your side bar, click the text widget, and then paste the widget code.

 

Another reminder is that some websites or blog sites (e.g. WordPress.com) do not allow Javascript (and other scripts) widget codes for security purposes.

Here are some websites where you can get widgets:

  1. Google Tools
  2. Blogger Plugins
  3. 25 Great Blogger Widgets
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Operations on Integers – Addition

Elementary School Mathematics, High School Algebra, High School Mathematics

Introduction

The set of integers is composed of the negative integers, zero, and the positive integers.  The integers can be visualized using the number line (see first figure), a horizontal line, where, by convention (agreed upon by mathematicians), the negative numbers are located at the left of zero, and the positive integers at the right of 0. In the number line, the number a is greater than the number b if a is at the right of b. Therefore, -2 is greater than -3, -1 is less than 1, 0 is greater than -4.

As shown in the figure above, each integer has a specific location (coordinate) on the number line. Aside from being a coordinate on the number line, each integer can also be considered as movement from 0. For example, +2 means moving 2 units to the right of 0, while -3 is moving 3 units to the left of 0.

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The Distributive Property

High School Algebra, High School Mathematics

Given numbers a, b, and c, we are familiar since elementary grades that a(b+c) = ab + ac. This is what we call the distributive property of multiplication over addition. From commutative property, we also know that xy = yx; therefore, (b + c)a = a(b+c).

Knowing this property, we can do a lot of mathematical operations.  For example, we do not need to memorize FOIL (First-Outside-Inside-Last) , one of the rote strategies (no need to memorize) in multiplying binomials.  That is, in (a + b)(x + y), we multiply a(x + y), multiply b(x + y), and then add both terms giving us a(x + y) + b(x +y) which is equal to ax + ay + bx + by. If we have solved this, we can definitely solve (a + b)(x + y + z) and also (a + b + c)(x + y + z) and multiplication of polynomials of many terms. » Read more

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