A Voice of Experience
| Mary Parker |
This article is published in the December 2011/January 2012 issue of MAA FOCUS.
MAA summer intern Mary Parker spoke to several MAA members who have worked with Great Courses. Here is part of her interview with Michael Starbird, a professor of mathematics and a University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas, Austin.
How did you get involved with the Great Courses program?
One of their recruiters sent me an email describing the company and asked if I would be interested in an interview. Later, she came out and watched a course I was teaching at the time, and I was invited to do a sample video lecture. The sample was sent to about 100 people before it was approved. So far, I’ve done six courses for them.
What is it like trying to lecture on film?
The challenge in the format is that if people don’t like it, they can turn it off. The courses are intended for intellectually curious adults, so the goal is to make every lecture fascinating. [The company has] a money-back guarantee, so it has to be good. They have very high standards.
What are some of your techniques for maintaining interest?
Say things that are interesting! Focus on the heart of the matter, the conceptually significant ideas, that math contains but that often get repressed in favor of mechanical techniques. I think there’s plenty of wonderful math content and ideas that can be made fascinating, because they are.
The content is several half-hour lectures, and you want each half-hour to be a story in itself. You want it to present an idea that is satisfyingly complete and has some closure to it. The first lecture [of my calculus series] is called “Two Ideas, Vast Implications.” One amazing feature of calculus is it has transformed how people perceive the world, with just two new ideas—the derivative and the integral. I do this in my classes as well, showing the big picture first.
What kind of feedback have you received?
One of the cutest ones I got back was an email that said: “Well, I am a doctor and I’ve practiced for many years. In the '60s I took a calculus class, and I vowed I would not die until I knew why I took that course. Now I can die.” I wrote back and said, “No, you can’t, there’s much more math to be enjoyed.” The calculus class particularly, I hear from people who say they took it before and didn’t know why. I’m trying to offer conceptual ideas of calculus and the consequences of the ideas.
What other Great Courses would you recommend?
I listen to the audio courses in the car—the math courses are always video so they can show graphics. But they have history, literature, economics, and philosophy. They are just great, they go out of their way to get good professors. One great one is a history of ancient Egypt, another is on the Civil War, another is on WWI. One of their most popular is how to listen to and understand great music.
What have you enjoyed most about doing these lectures?
To me, one of the really satisfying aspects of the project is that it reaches the general public and presents mathematics as a fascinating inquiry, since so many people have a negative experience with math in school. Even for those who like math, the intriguing parts of math are not as prominent in class as they should be. I want to show the fascination of math, to a wonderful audience—intellectually alive, eager to become more familiar with the joys of mathematical thinking. Overall, it is a wonderful example of a step to bring more interesting mathematics to a broader audience.
Everything that is changing the human experience most over the last 50 years comes from consequences of math and science and technology. But many people find those developments to be outside their comfort zone or find it threatening. It’s a serious issue, making math and science accessible. Not everyone needs to be a practitioner, but they need a sense of the positive significance of it. Science and mathematics can be a global human quest that transcends all political and social divides and could be a unifying force for civilization. There are big issues at stake, apart from the joy of learning.