Author Archives: Matthew Simonson

About Matthew Simonson

I am a second-year Network Science doctoral student at Northeastern University in Boston. I model homophily and time-varying dynamics on social networks.

OKCupid: The Math Behind Online Dating

Guest Author: Michalina Malysz “Like you use sentences to tell a person a story; you use algorithms to tell a story to a computer” (Rudder 2013). In today’s day and age, we have the world at our fingertips. The internet … Continue reading

Posted in Math in Pop Culture, Statistics, Technology & Math | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Tupper’s Self-Referential Formula

Thanks to Nelly Cheboi for bringing this formula, and all the accompanying links, to our attention. In his humorous 2015 Numberphile video, Matt Parker discusses a remarkable formula by Jeff Tupper of the University of Toronto whose graph is the letters, numbers, and symbols … Continue reading

Posted in Math, Math Games | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Summer’s Here: Time to Organize All Those Papers!

The start of summer is a great time to get organized: perhaps you finally have time to focus on something other than the next problem set, or perhaps you’re too burned out from finals to do anything else productive.  Back … Continue reading

Posted in Advice, Grad student life, staying organized, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

Dance Your Dissertation: Behind the Scenes

Three years ago, our former editor Diana Davis created the following math youtube sensation, conveying the main ideas of her geometry dissertation to the general public through dance, music, and some highly-skillful video editing. Today, we unlock the magic behind it.  First, … Continue reading

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Eigenightmares, Dancing Stick Figures, and the Advantages of a Spiral Approach to Pedagogy

For my next installment on innovative teaching techniques, I’d like to dredge another demon that haunted my nights long ago—EIGENVECTORS!  Normally, eigenvectors are introduced in the waning days of a first-year linear algebra course, when students’ minds are already saturated … Continue reading

Posted in Advice, Linear Algebra, Math, Math Teaching, Teaching | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Eigenightmares, Dancing Stick Figures, and the Advantages of a Spiral Approach to Pedagogy