Author Archives: evelynjlamb

How to Celebrate Math Poetry Month

April is the intersection of Math Awareness Month and National Poetry Month, so obviously we are all celebrating Math Poetry Month. Some of my favorite posts on Roots of Unity have been about poetry. This year, I posted “In Praise of Fractals” … Continue reading

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John Urschel: Athlete, Mathlete

A few weeks ago, my social media world got pretty excited that Ravens offensive lineman John Urschel and his collaborators recently published a paper in the Journal of Computational Mathematics: “A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians.” (That … Continue reading

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The Pi Day Link Roundup of the Century

We made it through the “Pi Day of the century” on Saturday. I took a spontaneous day trip to meet friends in Idaho, so I didn’t do any pi-related activities, but I saw plenty of pi coverage in the week leading … Continue reading

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Topology Teaching Blogs

I’m teaching topology for the first time this semester, so I’ve been poking around the blogosphere for ideas of different ways to explain some of the ideas in this class to my students. Luckily, right before I started the semester, I ran … Continue reading

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The Social Side of Mathematics

Samantha Oestreicher is a recent Ph.D. in applied mathematics. She’s been blogging about social mathematics since 2007, but I only discovered her blog in December when she started a series of posts about math and tap dancing. She describes a … Continue reading

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Math and the Genius Myth

Earlier this month, Science published a paper about the genius myth and gender. It found that when academics in a field think their discipline requires a special innate talent, that field tends to attract fewer women. “We’re not saying women [or … Continue reading

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A Different Perspective: Mathochism and the Calculus Diaries

I went skiing for the first time on Tuesday. As a native Texan, I’d never really seen the point of putting something slippery on your feet and then stepping on frozen water. But I live in Utah now, so ski … Continue reading

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Return of the Statistics Blogs

When I shared a few of my favorite statistics blogs over a year ago, Thomas Lumley self-promoted his blogs in the comments, and I’m so glad he did! He is the ringleader and a contributor to the University of Auckland … Continue reading

Posted in Statistics | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

In Memoriam

Last week, I was shocked to learn of the unexpected death of Tim Cochran, a topologist from my grad school alma mater, Rice University. In addition to being a well-respected mathematician, he was an advocate for women and other underrepresented groups … Continue reading

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Can Specifications Grading Cure What Ails My Syllabus?

I love teaching, and I hate grading. I know I’m not the only one. This semester, my math history course posed new grading challenges to me. Grading writing assignments is much more subjective than grading traditional math homework and tests, … Continue reading

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