Until I retired a couple of years ago, I taught mathematics ina comprehensive school in Scotland. For the last twentyyears I taught the Advanced Higher course, previouslyknown as Certificate of Sixth Year Studies – equivalent tothe second year of the A level course in England. The firstversion of this course had a paper called 'Calculus andGeometry' which contained a few weeks of conic sections. InScotland there are few people below the age of about thirty-five who know much about conic sections, so I will describehow I introduced the topic.
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