Calculus Reform: What is different this time?

By David Bressoud @dbressoud This is an excerpt from a longer article that has been submitted to the Notices of the AMS. A draft of the full submission can be found here. On May 30–31, 2019, representatives of the departments of mathematics at 24 public and private universities met in Lincoln, Nebraska to share department-wide...

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How relevant is Cognitive Load Theory to learning?

By Keith Devlin @profkeithdevlin A tweet from educator (and original MOOC co-creator) Stephen Downes (@oldaily) caught my eye as I was about to get down to writing this month’s post. In standard Downes fashion, the tweet took me to a short commentary on his blog with a link to the longer post he was commenting on,...

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Differential Equations Come to Life

By Audrey Malagon, Lead Editor, DUE Point Since 2003, the SIMIODE (Systemic Initiative for Modeling Investigations and Opportunities in Differential Equations) organization has been promoting a modeling-first approach to teaching undergraduate differential equations. With recent NSF support, they are expanding their offerings of course materials and training workshops. In this blog, I get to interview...

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Finding Community at MAA MathFest with the New NAM-MAA Blog Editors

By Omayra Ortega and Anisah Nu'Man Hello, world! We are Omayra Ortega, Anisah Nu’Man, Haydee Lindo, Jamylle Carter, Jacqueline Brannon-Giles, and Leona Harris; and we are the members of the new NAM editorial board for MAA Math Values! Watch this space for posts on teaching ideas, opportunities, current events, and cool math concepts. While you...

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Part 1: Resisting the Temptation to Skip the “Good” Stuff

By: Maria Hernández, Mathematics Instructor, The North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, @mathmodeling Image by Nick Koberstein In my job as a mathematics educator, I have had the good fortune of working with high school students and teachers in various capacities. Most recently I have been teaching Precalculus and Calculus courses. As the school...

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Living Proof: Exploring Privilege and Prejudice in Mathematics

By Michael Pearson, Executive Director of the Mathematical Association of America I am reading a book, Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility,” that carefully discusses the complex and nuanced relationships between white privilege, prejudice, and racism. DiAngelo also notes the role of ideology in preserving existing social ideals and structures, such as individualism and consumerism, and how...

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The Mathematics of Gerrymandering and the Supreme Court

By Dr. Rachel Levy, Deputy Executive Director of the Mathematical Association of America with an excerpt from Dr. Jeanne Clelland, University of Colorado, Boulder One of the interesting things about working at the MAA in Washington, DC is that people talk politics and policy. Honestly, I find it hard to keep up or even to...

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Does Society Need IMO Medalists? A Student’s View

By Meera Desai, awesomemathgirls.org A paper written by Dr. Man Keung Siu, a professor of math at the University of Hong Kong, titled “Does Society need IMO medalists?” poses an important question: how do math competitions fit in with the field of math at large? He starts by describing the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), including...

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Calculus Reordered: A History of the Big Ideas

Figure 1. Cover to Calculus Reordered. Available at Princeton University Press. By David Bressoud @dbressoud This month, Princeton University Press will publish my new book, Calculus Reordered: A History of the Big Ideas (Figure 1). At one level, this is a history of calculus, a successor to such works as Boyer’s The History of Calculus...

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Mathematics is a way of thinking – how can we best teach it?

By Keith Devlin @profkeithdevlin Last month I described my own, half-century career in mathematics, the first twenty-five years as a pure mathematician, then, in the second half, working on problems for industry and various branches of the US Department of Defense. I observed that at no stage did I make significant use of any of...

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