Is Math Really Beautiful?

By Keith Devlin @profkeithdevlin The above tweet caught my eye recently. The author is a National Board Certified mathematics teacher in New York City who has an active social media presence. Is his claim correct? Not surprisingly, a number of other mathematics educators responded, and in the course of the exchange, the author modified his...

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Should Students Wait until College to Take Calculus?

By David Bressoud @dbressoud I have often cited data from the Sadler and Sonnert FICSMath study (Factors Influencing College Success in Mathematics, sponsored by NSF grant #0813702), a large-scale study of 10,437 students in mainstream Calculus I in the fall of 2009 at a stratified random sample of 134 U.S. colleges and universities. Sadler and Sonnert have...

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How a Fields Medal Led to a Mathematical Roller-coaster Journey

By Keith Devlin @profkeithdevlin First, congratulations to Caucher Birkar, Alessio Figalli, Peter Scholze, and Akshay Venkatesh on being awarded the Fields Medal, an award that for regular “Devlin’s Angle” readers needs neither introduction nor description. (If it does, use Google.) With Fields Medals awarded only (at most) once every four years to mathematicians who produce...

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Learn Math and Live Longer

By Michael Pearson, Executive Director of the Mathematical Association of America An interview with Dr. Ellen Peters from the Aug./Sept. issue of MAA FOCUS newsmagazine. Those of us who teach mathematics believe that the critical thinking skills gained through proficiency in mathematics has value that extends across multiple areas of our students’ lives.  Research in...

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Calculus as a Modeling Course at Macalester College

By David Bressoud @dbressoud When I talk with individuals who are wrestling with improving their calculus program, I often describe calculus at Macalester. For over 15 years, we have approached the first calculus course as a modeling course, drawing inspiration from many of the early calculus reform efforts. This month’s column will look at how...

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21st Century Math: The Movie

By Keith Devlin @profkeithdevlin All my Devlin’s Angle posts this year so far have studied the dramatic shift that took place over the past twenty-five years in the way professional mathematicians “do the math” in order to solve real-world problems. There have been parallel changes in the way pure mathematicians work as well, but those...

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Departmental Turnaround: The Case of San Diego State University

By David Bressoud @dbressoud Paul Zorn and I have just published a special issue of PRIMUS on Improving the Teaching and Learning of Calculus (Bressoud & Zorn, 2018). It contains eight articles that should be of interest to anyone who is discontented with the current state of calculus instruction at their institution. Four of these...

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Cycling Can Be Such a Drag – and Math Can Tell You Exactly How Much

By Keith Devlin @profkeithdevlin Last month, my two greatest passions collided: mathematics and cycling. On my way back from a short biking trip to the Californian Central Coast (gorgeous in the late spring, when the grass is still green and the wildflowers are in full bloom), I stopped off in Morgan Hill (home of the...

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Explosive Growth of Advanced Undergraduate Statistics

By David Bressoud @dbressoud The 2015 CBMS Survey is now available. Last month I reported on Trends in Mathematics Majors. This month I am looking at what has happened to enrollments in particular mathematics courses. The column has three section: Enrollments by Category, where we see that the fastest growing category is Advanced Undergraduate Statistics;...

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Calculation Was the Price We Used to Have to Pay to do Mathematics

By Keith Devlin Ever since mathematics got properly underway around 3,000 years ago, there was only one way to achieve access to the field. You had to spend many years developing a fairly extensive calculation skillset. In the first instance, to pass the graduation and entrance examinations to gain initial access to the field. Then,...

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