Calculus for Teachers: Complex Differentiation

By David Bressoud @dbressoud As of 2024, new Launchings columns appear on the third Tuesday of the month. It was Cauchy in 1821 who first began studying complex-valued functions defined on the complex plane. He was actually sitting on almost 70 years of what amounted to research into these functions. The input defines a point in...

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From wandering to wayfinding: Moving Beyond Shiny Object Syndrome

By Lew Ludwig "The deep breath before the plunge" - a sentiment Gandalf shares with Pippin in the Return of the King. This phrase often runs through my mind as the last days of summer break wind down and the new school year is about to begin. To be clear, I do not see the new...

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Complement (bottom-up) learning with top-down activities to develop mathematical thinking ability

By Keith Devlin @KeithDevlin@fediscience.org, @profkeithdevlin.bsky.social Sometime in the early 2000s, my primary care physician offered me the option of no longer having an annual health checkup in person. Rather, I could just call into my nearest walk-in testing lab and have a blood draw, followed up a few days later by a quick video-chat. (They also wanted...

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Leveraging Data About Math Departments

By Dave Kung When I was department chair at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, we carefully tracked data about how we were serving students. Regularly updated spreadsheets showed how many students were in each course we offered and we used them to look for enrollment patterns and adjust our offerings as needed. We were particularly...

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Curious Calculations: How Math Found Me in the Future

By Cyndi Coon I grew up poor in rural western Michigan. Dirt-under-the-fingernails, government-cheese, make-your-own-fun kind of poor. The only things I had in abundance were imagination and grit. I was neurodivergent and undiagnosed, navigating the world by spotting patterns no one else seemed to notice. While other kids focused on finding the “right answer,” I...

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When and Where to Celebrate Pi Day

By Brian J. Gaines Few readers of this blog will need convincing that the number conventionally represented by the Greek letter π is truly marvelous. It can be defined as the ratio of any circle’s circumference to its diameter, but it pops up all over, not only in the geometry of circles. What is the...

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Calculus for Teachers: Whence Complex Numbers

By David Bressoud @dbressoud As of 2024, new Launchings columns appear on the third Tuesday of the month. Last month I tried to convey why complex numbers should be of interest to someone teaching regular real-valued calculus. This month I want to tackle an even more basic question: How did anybody even think to include the...

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What I Needed to Hear Ten Years Ago: A DREAMer’s Journey in Math

By Daniel Flores Galiote Throughout my academic journey, I have often found myself unable to relate on a personal level with my peers. For example, classmates will talk about the careers of their family members, many from families of professors. When such a conversation arises, I remain silent because why would I want to tell...

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There and Back Again: The Khannection Between AI and Engagement

By Lew Ludwig Recently, my wife and I watched a Columbus Crew victory—from the future. We were in Sydney for the EDUTech_AU conference, and thanks to the wonders of the international dateline, we enjoyed a Thursday-morning triumph before the match even happened in Ohio. The opening Crew goal was a textbook example of "playing to space":...

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Cynthia Simmons: Space for Math

By Ralph Pantozzi What do you do when you dream of exploring space, but the spaces in which you travel contain few clear routes to the stars? Cynthia Simmons, spaceflight engineering specialist and Deputy Center Director at NASA , knew what to do: point herself in the direction of the nearest signs of flight. I...

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