Great article on graph sketching by @Whitehughes in @Mathematical_A MiS this month. So many truths, such as students avoiding graph sketching and being brought up in algebraic tradition 1/6

Around 8 or 9 yrs ago I took on a group in yr 12 that were openly "love maths, hate graphs" (their ACTUAL phrase) which I took *every* effort to drive out of them with "if it's tricky draw a piccy". I saw the value of focusing on it with that group! 2/6

I think I was lucky to have maths teachers at A-level who did a lot of work on fostering graph sketching as a way to the solution, rather than a solution itself. In the article Susan talks about graphing software not being a substitute for knowing how tone sketch graphs 3/6

I agree, because I describe graph sketching as a characuture of the actual graph, it is designed to accentuate the key features through a distortion of the "reality". Scale is sacrificed in favour of shape, form, axis crossings. In this sketching can be *more* beautiful 4/6

Lastly (some may know this, but it was a revelation to me) on sketching any graph a common mistake is drawing axes first, esp with quadratics. Draw the shape of the graph first and then put your axes on. Your sketches will look a lot better because you will concentrate... 5/6

...on the aesthetic part of the graph rather than shoehorning an ugly curve through where you want them to cross the axes you have drawn. 6/6