A Radical Approach to the Logarithm

By David Bressoud @dbressoud As of 2024, Launchings columns appear on the third Tuesday of the month. My experience has been that most students never understand logarithms. Inevitably they struggle to remember that log(a*b) = log(a) + log(b) and log(a^n) = n log(a). The standard approach is to introduce the logarithmic function as the inverse...

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This Is Not My Home: Embracing the Nomadic Life of Grad School

  By Krystal Maughan “We have begun our initial descent; please ensure your safety belts are on,” said the familiar voice of the pilot. I peered out the window and saw a sheet of white snow and a grey sky where, just a few hours ago, I had overlooked warm, turquoise waters and whipped past...

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A Mathematician’s Quest to Shape AI into the Ideal Calculus Student

  By Lew Ludwig I am a B+ \LaTeX{} user. I use it to write all my weekly homeworks and tests. I know to use \displaystyle to make my limits look nice, and I can kludge an $\underline{\hspace{1.in}}$ to make a blank space for an answer on a test. But things like tables give me...

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Everyone Has a Seat at the Table

By Lakeshia Legette Jones I believe the professional paradise is the place where teaching, research, and personal values intersect. It happens commonly for those in the social sciences and humanities. Having friends (and a husband) in these areas, I’m familiar with that side of the academic coin. I enjoy watching and listening to the ways...

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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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Pushing for Success for All in Today’s Fraught Political Climate, Part II

  By Dave Kung Editor’s Note: Part 1 of this post told an uplifting story of how Central Texas middle school math leaders saw inequitable outcomes – and did something about it. We can learn a lot from how Central Texas leaders – with support from the E3 Alliance and the Dana Center – worked...

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Pushing for Success for All in Today’s Fraught Political Climate, Part I

  By Dave Kung Editor’s Note: Math Values is thrilled to introduce Kung’s Quarter, a new quarterly column by the inimitable Dave Kung. Previously the editor of Dana Center Connections on this blog, Dave’s long history with the MAA and impressive work with the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin...

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You Can Be a STAR

  By Ed Aboufadel, @aboufade I have been interested in leadership and related ideas since I was a teenager, particularly leadership concepts built upon classifications. Perhaps it is due to my love of mathematics, which is full of classifications, like function types in precalculus. Over the past year, I have been learning about behavioral questions...

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DEI: The frame that dare not say its name

By David Bressoud @dbressoud As of 2024, Launchings columns appear on the third Tuesday of the month. I began writing this column at the RUME Conference (Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education) in Omaha, Nebraska. I had recently returned from an MAA workshop planning a project with the vision that “Every student succeeds in introductory mathematics...

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Learning When to Say No

By Jennifer Guerrero Throughout graduate school, or perhaps life, people have attempted to give me a lot of advice on how to not take on too much. “Say no to the things that you don’t want to do,” “Say no to the non-important things,” etc. are a few of the phrases that I have been...

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