Students Speak: How Making Math Friends help make a Competitive Environment Collaborative

By Lina Liu Lina Liu Ever since I started taking proof-based math courses, I noticed a tension that exists in all of my classes at the beginning of each semester. There would be little to no conversation happening. The room would be still and quiet as our professor walked into the room right before lecture....

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Caffeine: The Frenemy of Mathematicians

By Alexis Newton Alexis Newton As a mathematician, I have a love-hate relationship with coffee — which is to say, caffeine — of longstanding. The baristas at my habitual Starbucks knew me so well as an undergraduate that they would see me in line and start my order: a grande vanilla sweet cream cold brew....

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What Exactly is High School Math?

By Dave Kung, Director of Policy; Lindsay Fitzpatrick, Senior Lead - Policy and Implementation, Charles A. Dana Center, with research and writing support from Education Strategy Group and Student Achievement Partners “What are students doing in their high school math classes?!?” Dr. Dave Kung If you’ve spent any time at all with college math faculty,...

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A Mathematician, a Chemist, and an Economist walk into a Classroom . . . to Work on Calculus Curricula

By Suzanne Dorée Suzanne Dorée How do other disciplines use calculus at the undergraduate level? What mathematical questions will students see in partner discipline courses? What vocabulary and notation do other disciplines use to describe that mathematics? When will students use technology to address mathematical questions in other disciplines, and what technologies do they use?...

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Students Speak: From Failing High School Algebra to Acing College Calculus: Embracing Mistakes

By Dayne Patillo Dayne Patillo “It’s okay, Dayne, some people simply don’t have math brains.” “You’re just more right-brained and creative.” “There’s nothing wrong with sticking to literature and writing!” “No. It’s not that you ‘don’t have a math brain.’ You’re just stuck in a Russian poetry class where you don’t understand Russian. And, even...

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Open Educational Resources: Financial Accessibility is Important, Too

By Doug Ensley Doug Ensley Since the beginning of the 2021 spring semester, Shippensburg University students have saved over $100,000 on classroom materials, thanks to the efforts of faculty in the SU Mathematics Department. In that time, five different courses, affecting over 1000 students, have changed textbook requirements, switching from a commercial textbook platform that...

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How can we picture information? How can we model it mathematically? Part I

By Keith Devlin @profkeithdevlin This month’s essay continues a thread commenced with the May and June posts. In 1958, Harold (Hal) Leavitt (1922–2007), a managerial psychologist, and Thomas Whisler (1920–2006), professor of industrial relations, both at the University of Chicago, published what would prove to be a highly influential article in the Harvard Business Review...

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My Mathematical Journey: The Alternating Sign Matrix Theorem

By: David Bressoud @dbressoud David Bressoud is DeWitt Wallace Professor Emeritus at Macalester College and former Director of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences Problem: Prove the Vandermonde Determinant Formula which says that the determinant of the matrix for which the entry in row i, column j is (x­_j)^{n–i) is the product of x_i...

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Students Speak: The Best Thing My Professor Did For Me to Make Me Feel Welcome in Class

By Zack Bright Zack Bright Throughout my career as an undergraduate mathematics student, I have met a lot of professors. Each one was unique in their own way, and, in addition to the classwork, taught me lessons that didn't really have anything to do with mathematics. These “life lessons” have been an important part of...

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Making Introductory Mathematics More Accessible with Universal Design

By Erin Moss, Co-Editor, DUE Point, Millersville University In our DUE Point posts, we typically catch up with Principal Investigators at least a year or two into the process of administering their grant. This month, we are interviewing a PI earlier in the process to help readers understand the preparatory work of taking an idea...

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