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Opinions expressed on these pages were the views of the writers and did not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the American Mathematical Society.
Category Archives: Math Education
Not-So-Confident Intervals
Here is a test for you. Let’s say 300 mathematicians were polled concerning how many hours of TV they watch per week. What does it mean to say that a 95% confidence interval for the average number of hours of … Continue reading
e is for Ebola
A recent NPR blog features a few quotes emphasizing a math word that is lamentably absent from many readers’ vocabularies: “It’s spreading and growing exponentially,” President Obama said Tuesday. “This is a disease outbreak that is advancing in an exponential … Continue reading
Posted in Applied Math, Biomath, Math Education, Mathematics and Computing, people in math, Statistics
Tagged Amy Greer, Basic Reproduction Ratio, Caitlyn Rivers, computational epidemiology, David Hartley, Ebola, Effective Reproduction Ratio, Ellsworth Campbell, Exponential growth, IDEA, SIR model
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Medaling Mathematicians
You may consider the Fields Medal a boon to the mathematical community as it showcases amazing young mathematicians and brings math into the limelight. Or you may view the Fields Medal as an unfortunate reinforcement of the notion that mathematics … Continue reading
Posted in Events, Math Education, Mathematics and the Arts, Number Theory, people in math, Theoretical Mathematics, Uncategorized, women in math
Tagged Awards in Math, fields medal, First Woman Winner of Fields Medal, International Congress of Mathematics
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Alias, Schmalias
While the great line from Romeo and Juliet: “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” rings true, would a digital rose smell as sweet? We often think of the digital world as a mere “renaming” of the … Continue reading
The Funny Pages
Ah, summer! Sleeping in, reading fiction, traveling, and, of course, preparing for fall classes. I’ll be teaching a math history class, which will be fun but is entirely new to me. As I cling to the last few weeks of … Continue reading
Visualize Your Algorithms
As a college student in the ‘90’s with a penchant for “visual learning” I was never drawn to computer science. My one computer science class focused mostly on syntax and basic logic. Had shuffling and sorting been presented as eye-catching … Continue reading
Fermi Estimation with Liquid Mercury Splash Fights
The semester is over (sorry, quarter system folks, but you can get your revenge in August and September), and you just want to put your feet up and surf the Internet. Of course, there are lots of ways you might accidentally learn … Continue reading
Posted in Math Education, Recreational Mathematics
Tagged engineering, estimation, fermi problems, fun math, math, mathematics, physics, Randall Munroe, xkcd
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Crowd-Funded Mathematics
What if your research was funded by 100 strangers who had read your research proposal online and clicked “donate”? You’d feel responsible to write about your research in a more widely accessible way. You might pledge to provide monthly updates … Continue reading
Posted in Applied Math, Math Education, Theoretical Mathematics
16 Comments
Discovering Proofs
Patrick Stevens is an undergraduate mathematics student at the University of Cambridge, and I’ve really been enjoying his blog recently. He’s been doing a series of posts about discovering proofs of standard real analysis theorems. He writes that the series … Continue reading
Posted in Math Education, Theoretical Mathematics
Tagged analysis, Patrick Stevens, real analysis, teaching analysis
3 Comments
Narrowing The Gender Gap
This 3-minute clip of Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson is the kind of thing that might provide just the right bit of encouragement to someone struggling to express their passion for STEM. Neil DeGrasse Tyson Said What He Thinks About Race … Continue reading
Posted in Issues in Higher Education, people in math, women in math
Tagged gender gap, Larry Summers, Math gene, Neil DeGrasse Tyson
2 Comments