What Firefighting, Military Tactics, Cancer Treatment, and Teenage Parties Can Tell Us about Learning Math

Using math to solve a novel real-world problem is hard. Cognitive science explains why. It also tells us what we need to do to overcome the feature of the human brain that causes the difficulty. By Keith Devlin @profkeithdevlin  These activities are all connected. How? The answer can be found in cognitive science  My posts...

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Part II: The Critical Study of Ethics in Mathematics

By Michael Pearson, Executive Director of the Mathematical Association of America The topic of ethics was very much on my mind when I attended a meeting of the National Academy’s Roundtable on Data Science Postsecondary Education, the theme of which was Motivating Data Science Education through Social Good. There were a variety of presentations on...

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Black and Excellent in Math

By: Haydee Lindo, Assistant Professor, Williams College, @HaydeeLindo Mathematics is a beautiful discipline and, despite its challenges, it is worth pursuing. As an added bonus, jobs in STEM pay nearly twice the national average. However, only 4% of Bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics (1007 of 24,293) were awarded to Black and African American students in 2016....

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Transforming Undergraduate Statistics Education through Experiential Learning

By Erin Moss, Co-editor of DUE Point SCHOLAR (Statistical Consulting Help for Organizational Leaders and Academic Researchers) is an undergraduate student statistical consulting group at the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO) that works on client-submitted projects. Students collect, clean, and analyze data, then provide their clients with written and/or oral reports of the results. They...

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Do Math and Chess Make You a Better Problem Solver? Teaching Math for Life in a Wicked World

By Keith Devlin @profkeithdevlin Does doing this make you better at solving problems outside of mathematics? Does taking a logic course at college make you a better reasoner? How about algebra? Or calculus? Or playing chess? You hear all of these touted as being beneficial to developing good critical thinking skills and being a better...

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Questioning Final Exams

By David Bressoud @dbressoud In this month’s column, I discuss my own thoughts about how to handle exams. I invite my readers to share their own thoughts here. I will summarize these in a future column. Last month I mentioned Paul Tough’s new book, The Years that Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us....

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Calculus and Virtual Reality

By Katie Haymaker, Co-editor of DUE Point The use of smartphones during class is commonly a source of exasperation for instructors, but not for Nick Long and Jeremy Becnel, of Stephen F. Austin State University. They created a smartphone app that brings virtual reality visualization tools within reach for students in multivariable calculus. The Calculus...

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A California Community College’s Response to Assembly Bill 705 and Its Impact on Math Placement

Photo credit: https://www.dvc.edu/academics/departments/math/statway.html By: Jamylle Carter, Professor of Mathematics, Diablo Valley College “I’m kind of nervous about being in this class.  Last year I wouldn’t have been able to take statistics because I hadn’t finished intermediate algebra.  Do you really think I can do this?” This question came from a returning adult student (“Lori”) on...

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Part I: The Critical Study of Ethics in Mathematics

By Michael Pearson, Executive Director of the Mathematical Association of America Most of us like to think of ourselves as ethical individuals, and in my experience and opinion, the mathematical sciences community as a whole manages quite well in this regard. But I’d also say that mostly, the practice of mathematics in and of itself...

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Failing Low SES Students: Why it is Better to be Rich than Smart

By David Bressoud @dbressoud The Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW) at Georgetown University has just released an important report, Born to Win, Schooled to Lose: Why equally talented students don’t get equal chances to be all they can be. The study compares socio-economic status (SES)—measured by parental income, education, and occupation—with educational performance...

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