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...

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Editorial: What Are Your Summer Plans?

By Kira Hamman Ah, summer. Grades are in, email volume is down, and you can relax, right? Well, sort of. Faculty know that the “summers off” narrative is mostly a myth. Still, it’s true that the pace is different in the summer, and you can focus on things you don’t have bandwidth for during the...

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Professors of Teaching: Lessons Learned from a Unique Teaching-Focused Faculty Model

  By Brian Sato As institutions of higher education grapple with increasing enrollments and a desire to improve the quality of their undergraduate programs, teaching-focused faculty are becoming more prominent. These positions may be particularly important at research-intensive institutions which are often marked by significant disparities in academic outcomes for students from minoritized populations. As...

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Attrition

By David Bressoud @dbressoud As of 2024, Launchings columns appear on the third Tuesday of the month. This month I’d like to share some data gathered by Andrew Ekstrom, a lecturer at Macomb Community College and the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. He was able to obtain anonymized data on student enrollment and...

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Can AI Pass the Test, Part II: Playing to Space

  By Lew Ludwig In Tuesday’s post, I talked about the centaur vs. cyborg analogy for how people approach AI. My student John had used the cyborg approach with my cheat-proof calculus exam, yielding a rare perfect score, and I wasn’t sure how to move forward from that with the final exam. Playing to Space...

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Can AI Pass the Test, Part I: Of Centaurs and Cyborgs

  By Lew Ludwig Last week, as the semester was winding down, I found myself unexpectedly tearing up during a meeting with a student. I was pressing the student on their understanding of a mathematical concept and how they used AI in this process. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning...

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Reflections on my relationship with “Working hard”

  By Elizabeth Garcia “Hay que trabajar duro para salir adelante,” which translates to “we have to work hard to get ahead” is a phrase that echoes through my being. It encapsulates the perseverance of the working class and it has been the reality of my parents for as long as they can remember. It's...

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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...

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The Politics of Education

By Michael Pearson A recent Washington Post article highlighted how state laws are increasingly dictating school curriculums, with conservative states often limiting discussions on controversial topics while progressive states opt for a broader, more inclusive educational scope. This growing trend underscores the deep divide in how education is approached across the United States, reflecting a...

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Using Data to Catalyze, Inform, and Sustain Change

By Jordan Kostiuk Recently, I had the joy of being in community with folks committed to tackling a wicked problem at the Critical Issues in Math Education (CIME) workshop hosted by SLMath: How do we provide equitable and effective math instruction to all students? As an inspirational and motivating three days came to a close,...

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