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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Trends in Mathematics Majors

By David Bressoud By the time this column appears, the full CBMS 2015 survey of math departments should be available at www.ams.org/profession/data/cbms-survey/cbms2015. I reported some of the data on faculty demographics in my October and November Launchings columns. This month I want to report on what is happening to undergraduate mathematics majors. From 2010 to...

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How Today’s Pros Solve Math Problems: Part III

By Keith Devlin NOTE: This article is the final installment of a four-episode mini-series posted here starting in mid-January. In writing it, I have assumed my readers have read those three earlier pieces.   At the end of last month’s post, I left readers with a (seemingly) simple arithmetic problem. I prefaced the problem with...

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Gaps in Student Understanding of the Fundamental Theorem of Integral Calculus

By David Bressoud I have long held the belief (Bressoud, 2011) that we should revert to the original name, the Fundamental Theorem of Integral Calculus (FTIC), for what in the 1960s came to be known as the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus (FTC). The reason is that the real importance of this theorem is not that...

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How Today’s Pros Solve Math Problems: Part II

By Keith Devlin CHANGE OF PLAN: When I wrote last month’s post, I said I would conclude the description of my Nueva School Course this time. But when I sat down to write up that concluding piece, I realized it would require not one but two further posts. The course itself was the third iteration...

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A False Dichotomy: Lecture vs. Active Learning

By David Bressoud On January 31, I published a piece in The Conversation, “Why Colleges Must Change How They Teach Calculus.” The following is one of the statements that I made in this article: Active learning does not mean ban all lectures. A lecture is still the most effective means for conveying a great deal...

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