Devlin’s Angle – Mathematical Association of America

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Grad Student Blooper Reel

By Jasmine Camero Whether you're scrolling through social media, listening to chatter in the math department lounge, or talking to an old friend you haven’t seen in a while, you are most likely pointing out the highlights of your life and career. You hardly ever hear anyone gloating about their struggles. Well, this is because...

In the World of Mathematics Outreach, it’s Always Prime Time

By Keith Devlin @KeithDevlin@fediscience.org, @profkeithdevlin.bsky.social Best wishes to all for 2025, which happens to be the product of the proper divisors of its square root. Last year saw the announcement that a new “largest known prime number” had been discovered; an integer with 41,024,320 digits. Note to popular science writers: Notice that I just avoided...

In the World of Mathematics Outreach, it’s Always Prime Time

By Keith Devlin @KeithDevlin@fediscience.org, @profkeithdevlin.bsky.social Best wishes to all for 2025, which happens to be the product of the proper divisors of its square root. Last year saw the announcement that a new “largest known prime number” had been discovered; an integer with 41,024,320 digits. Note to popular science writers: Notice that I just avoided...

The mathematician who—incidentally—helped mathematicians to stop worrying and love the computer.

By Keith Devlin @KeithDevlin@fediscience.org, @profkeithdevlin.bsky.social Yes, this month’s title is a reference to the iconic 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove. Walk into any mathematics professor’s office and you’ll see a computer. Indeed, the chances are high that, even if said mathematician is not actively using it, it’s switched on. Back in 1985—the year AFTER the Macintosh...

The (very) tricky math of detecting gerrymandering in election districts

Keith Devlin @KeithDevlin@fediscience.org, @profkeithdevlin.bsky.socialwith Ellen Veomett https://ellenveomett.com District gerrymandering. The map on the left looks unfair; it was. The one on the right seems fine. But how do you know for sure? Today is Election Day in the United States. Which, among other things, means we are likely in for a series of lawsuits, many...

The Shifting Sands of Algebra

By Keith Devlin @KeithDevlin@fediscience.org, @profkeithdevlin.bsky.social My August post about the growth (and changing nature) of algebra generated some feedback. For the most part, those who objected to one or more statements seemed to be motivated by an assumption of what the word “algebra” means (or should be taken to mean). That certainly seems to be...

What is the Most Valuable Benefit You Got from Becoming a Mathematician?

By Keith Devlin @KeithDevlin@fediscience.org, @profkeithdevlin.bsky.social Having a media presence, I often get asked for a quotable answer to that question. I usually answer, “It taught me never to be sure I’m right.” Mathematics is unforgiving. If you made an error in your solution or your proof, you have only two choices. Correct the error or...

Algebra. It’s powerful. But it’s not what it was

By Keith Devlin @KeithDevlin@fediscience.org, @profkeithdevlin.bsky.social What is algebra? That question arose in the Q&A session at a recent screening of the new documentary movie Counted Out that I wrote about in last month’s post. Here is the answer I alluded to in my response, but was way too much to launch into. To most non-mathematicians...

Math Skill is a Civil Right – The Movie

By Keith Devlin @KeithDevlin@fediscience.org, @profkeithdevlin.bsky.social Access to basic math thinking skills is a key civil rights issue of our age. This is the top-level framing issue that shaped Counted Out, a cinema-released documentary film that was at least six years in the making, and had premiere screenings in San Francisco and Los Angeles earlier this...

What is the Most Important Skill Mathematicians Bring to Collaborative Work on a Wicked Problem?

By Keith Devlin @KeithDevlin@fediscience.org, @profkeithdevlin.bsky.social During the 1990s, my main research project was an applied one on workplace communication, where I collaborated with a social scientist (wearing her ethnographer hat) who, in addition to her doctorate in sociolinguistics, had obtained a second PhD in computer science. (Much of our joint work was collected together into...

Mathematical Models – Useful But Often False

By Keith Devlin @KeithDevlin@fediscience.org, @profkeithdevlin.bsky.social According to the Ancient Greek philosopher Proclus (c.419–486) in his Commentary on Euclid, geometry (from geo metros, “measurement of land”) first arose in surveying practices among the ancient Egyptians, to assist them in redefining property boundaries following the annual the flooding of the Nile Valley. In modern terms, we would refer...

What’s it like to be a student in my class?

By Keith Devlin @KeithDevlin@fediscience.org, @profkeithdevlin.bsky.social “What’s it like to be a student in my class?” I’ve periodically asked myself that question many times throughout my long career as a mathematics educator. The longer I taught, the greater became the disconnect between how I had perceived mathematics when I was first learning it, and how mathematics...

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