Leveling the Working Field: An Ethical Perspective

By Rick Cleary Mathematicians like to solve problems, and we advertise this trait when we promote the study of mathematics to students and their families. We have challenging problems in our fields of study, and there are also problems that arise in our professional lives. Many of these ‘big picture’ problems arise because we lack...

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Trends in Minority Enrollments

By David Bressoud @dbressoud Last month I presented trends in Bachelor’s degrees earned in the mathematical sciences, with particular attention to gender disparities. This month I want to dig a little deeper into the different categories of students as tracked by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), in particular what has happened to the...

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What’s the Best Way to Teach Calculus?

By Keith Devlin @KeithDevlin@fediscience.org Short post this week, to give you time to read an important (and how!) research paper on university-level calculus instruction, published recently in SCIENCE, Vol 381, Issue 6661 (31 August 2023), pp. 995-998. Yes, it’s yet another study comparing active student engagement with traditional, lecture-based instruction. But wait. The paper’s title is Establishing a new...

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More Games Involving Geometry: EvenQuads

By Gary Gordon and Liz McMahon In our last episode, we saw how the card game SET® is closely tied to affine geometry. [See this post for the details.] SET cards have four attributes – number, color, shading, and shape – and each of those attributes has three possibilities: the number is 1, 2, or...

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Be Careful What You Ask For

By Lew Ludwig The only way to really understand mathematics is to learn and discover it on one’s own. Thus students will select a mathematical topic, read and teach themselves any necessary background to understand it and then investigate it. Various interim reports will be collected throughout the term. Projects are graded based on the...

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Count Me In with Della and Deanna Season 3, A Podcast

“Broadening the understanding of what it means to be a mathematician.” Join Della Dumbaugh and Deanna Haunsperger this fall for Season 3 of Count Me In with Della and Deanna. Listen to interesting conversations with mathematicians about their personal stories of growing up. These conversations will give you insights into the many paths people take...

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From Rejection to Redemption: A Tale of Two Job Searches

By Aaron Wootton It was the Fall semester of 2003; I was sat at a table having lunch with friends from graduate school. One friend asked, “Who has started applying for jobs?” It dawned on me: this was my last year of graduate school, and I needed to do something afterwards. I have no idea...

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Motivated by Business, Empowered by Math

By DUE Point Lead Editor, Audrey Malagon, Virginia Wesleyan University DUE Point blog has featured several projects affiliated with the NSF-funded SUMMIT-P project focused on how mathematics curriculum can best support students’ needs in partner disciplines, including business. In this post, Mike May of St. Louis University tells us about the Business College Algebra subproject...

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Testimonios: Dr. William Yslas Vélez

Testimonios, a new publication from MAA/AMS, brings together first-person narratives from the vibrant, diverse, and complex Latinx and Hispanic mathematical community. Starting with childhood and family, the authors recount their own particular stories, highlighting their upbringing, education, and career paths. Testimonios seeks to inspire the next generation of Latinx and Hispanic mathematicians by featuring the...

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Finding your Community

By Roberto Hernandez (he/him) Embarking on the journey through graduate school is a tough one. It can be very daunting to attempt on your own, without a support system. A support system can take on many forms. I am fortunate enough that I haven’t been alone in the process – my partner Jasmine and I...

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