Part III: The Critical Study of Ethics in Mathematics

By Michael Pearson, Executive Director of the Mathematical Association of America On the train to work this morning, I read an extended essay in The Atlantic by Yuval Noah Harari, a historian, and philosopher who is on the faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, drawn from his new book, 21 Lessons for the 21...

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Equal vs. Fair

By: Dave Kung, Professor of Mathematics at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, @dtkung Ten years ago I walked into a first-day calculus class, ready with an ice breaker. To start, I instructed them to “find a partner.” As the room buzzed to life with students pairing up, most people quickly found someone. But I watched...

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Creating a Math SoTL Network

By Katie Haymaker, Co-editor of DUE Point Mathematics educators regularly grapple with practical questions about how to approach the teaching and learning of mathematics. Many instructors make use of existing research in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), but it can be challenging to create and implement a new SoTL research agenda. The American...

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In Memoriam: Richard Allen (Dick) Askey

By David Bressoud @dbressoud Dick Askey died on October 9 of this year. I realize that he could be difficult. Not everyone has fond memories of him. But he was an incredibly important mentor to me. I want to take this opportunity to share a bit about the person that I have known and make...

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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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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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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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