Category Archives: Math Education

Awesome K-12 Math Teachers Exist! And they have blogs.

I sometimes get tired of hearing about how “teachers (meaning K-12 teachers) just don’t understand this or that, or won’t try doing something new,” or are deficient in some way or another.  We often advise teachers to let go of … Continue reading

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On Teaching Analysis

Timothy Gowers, University of Cambridge mathematician and Fields Medalist, is teaching an analysis class this term, and fortunately for me, he’s blogging about it. Analysis IA is part of the first-year math major sequence at the University of Cambridge, and … Continue reading

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My Top Ten Issues in Mathematics Education

What are your “top ten”?  Sue VanHattum, a full time faculty member at Contra Costa College inspired me with her wonderful top ten list . Below are my top ten Issues in Mathematics Education.  While this is my opinion, I do … Continue reading

Posted in Issues in Higher Education, K-12 Mathematics, Math Education, people in math, women in math | 9 Comments

Why Should We Fund Math Research?

As my co-blogger Brie Finegold mentioned last month, Cathy O’Neil of mathbabe.org has been writing about how MOOCs might change the face of math departments and, ultimately, how math research gets funded. O’Neil is concerned that without calculus classes to … Continue reading

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Mistakes Are Interesting

I just finished grading my first midterms of the semester, and I’m learning a lot about how my students think through the mistakes they made. (With apologies to Tolstoy, I’m definitely experiencing a bit of “correct solutions are all alike; … Continue reading

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How to get your friend to like math: A multipronged approach

In Math with Bad Drawings, the author Ben Orlin calls the query in my title the most adorable ever, and I have to agree.  Now math is so awesome that it’s hard to believe that we actually have to develop … Continue reading

Posted in Math Education, Mathematics and the Arts, Recreational Mathematics | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Job Security Calculus: Reasoning about our futures

Most academics have a love/hate relationship to teaching, and especially teaching Calculus.  Prior to the first exam of the semester, it seems that everyone in the class is there for learning’s sake, discussing ideas, engaging in problem-solving.  But we worry … Continue reading

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The Revolution Will Be 3D Printed

“What would you print if you had a 3D printer in your home?” James Madison University math professor Laura Taalman is printing a thing a day and blogging about it at MakerHome. Her family has a MakerBot Replicator 2 and … Continue reading

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Winter Break Reading: Baking and Math

If you, like me, like both food and math, then maybe you should check out Yen Duong’s blog Baking and Math. Duong is a graduate student studying geometric group theory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her blog mostly … Continue reading

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I’ve always resonated with Mobius bands — but now I know signals do too!

So here I am, trained as a topologist and geometric group theorist, starting a job that involves mainly digital signal processing. Today I was perusing the magazines on the shelf at my new job, and what do I see?  The … Continue reading

Posted in Applied Math, Math Education, Mathematics and the Arts, Recreational Mathematics, Theoretical Mathematics | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments