Learnings from Transforming Elementary Statistics Courses into Online and Hybrid Offerings

By Brandi Falley and Ryan Sides Brandi Falley While the topics and depth covered in Elementary Statistics varies by school, it is still often a difficult course for the majority of students. Statistics is not a traditional math course where pattern recognition can aid in solving problems, and students are often forced to use logic...

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My Mathematical Journey: The q-Dyson 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 I spent the fall of 1983 at the University of Minnesota supported by a Sloan Fellowship. Two important things happened that fall. The first was that I met Jan Alford,...

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How Can We Picture Information? How Can We Model It Mathematically? Part II

By Keith Devlin @profkeithdevlin This month’s essay completes a thread commenced with the May, June and July posts. Last month, I described the sequence of events that led me to join an interdisciplinary team of researchers at Stanford University’s Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) in 1987 to try and develop a...

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University Teaching Faculty: A New Job Opportunity

By Rebecca Swanson Rebecca Swanson To paraphrase one of my mentors, Erica Flapan, there are many different ways to be a mathematician. Many of us are familiar with the standard tenure-track path that emphasizes both teaching and research (to varying degrees) along with service. However, some of us discover our primary passion in teaching students...

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Mathematics for Human Flourishing at Ursinus College

By Nicholas Scoville Nicholas Scoville Ursinus College revamped its core curriculum a few years ago. Motivated almost exclusively by the desire to avoid “checkbox mentality,” the college envisioned a fluid yet coherent core, one that allows for a variety of options but does not feel like a collection of completely disjointed courses. One of the...

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Mathematics as a Safe Space

By Matthew Pons For a good part of my life, mathematics has been a public safe space. Why did I need a safe space? In high school, I was bullied and made to feel unwelcome by most of my peers. I had transferred into the public school system in my county at the beginning of...

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Testimonios: Dr. Alexander Díaz-López

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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Mathematicians’ Case for Preserving the Right to Abortion

By Karen Saxe, former MAA Vice President; Associate Executive Director, and Director of Government Relations, American Mathematical Society Karen Saxe When I heard about the leak of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, I was not surprised. That Roe v Wade would be overturned felt like a done deal when...

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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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