A Blog On Blog On Math Blogs

Your blogger blogging, one last time.

Folks, I’m packing it in. After 97 posts and nearly 5 years of covering the math blog beat, the time has come for me to pack up my blogging tools and hit the high road to adventure.

I’ve really enjoyed blogging so much, but there is a funny thing I’ve observed over the years. The posts I like the most or am the most proud of are often not the ones that get the most traffic. Since this is my final and farewell post, I wanted to share the three favorite posts that I’ve written here. What makes them my favorite? Usually it’s that I feel like I’ve told a good story, or learned a lot in researching the post, or that I just find myself talking to friends often about the topic. I hope you enjoy these posts (perhaps, again).

• Black Hat, White Hat, a tale of cybersecurity and a hero blogger who saved the internet.
• The Blockchain Party, an explanation of some of the math behind bitcoin and the blockchain, published in 2017 at the pinnacle of bitcoin mania.
• Do Evaluations Really Add Up?, an inspection of some (mostly bad) attitudes on the internet about about student evaluations of teaching.

When I joined Evelyn Lamb as a co-editor of this blog in 2015, the internet felt like a different place. We were still in the golden age of math blogging, the art of podcasting was on the rise, and Twitter was a platform for the people. Since then, the landscape has shifted, but the #MTBoS remains a rich and wonderful place.

Accordingly, as one might notice from my blog posts, my interests have shifted away from basic problems in math and become more directed towards the ways that bloggers are using the tools of math to make a societal difference in issues like gun control, vaccination, climate change, gerrymandering and elections.

To be clear, when I say basic problems in math, I’m talking about things like the Erdős Discrepancy Problem and the Graph Isomorphism Theorem. So maybe basic isn’t quite the right word. But you know what I mean. There are still some incredible bloggers writing about various explorations in mathematical pedagogy, visual artists working with core ideas in mathematics, and all manner of opining on the intrigue of academia.

As for this blog, stick around, there’s more to come from the Blog on Math Blogs! Later this summer, the talented Rachel Crowell with be joined by a brand new to the blog Vanessa Rivera Quiñones. I’m looking forward to their posts, and I might just pop back in for the occasional guest post. In the meantime, you can find me on Twitter @extremefriday.