Teaching & Learning – Page 4 – Mathematical Association of America

Featured Resources

What’s Important About UCSD’s Math Report—And What It Leaves Out

By Kyndall Brown and Robin Wilson As educators who have collectively spent 50-plus years of our lives on improving math teaching, we are normally pleased when math education gets attention in the newspapers. But a recent report from UC San Diego about declining math preparation has been a mixed blessing. Crucially, the report puts a spotlight...

AI solves an 80 year-old Erdős problem.

By Keith Devlin @KeithDevlin@fediscience.org, @profkeithdevlin.bsky.social Much of the attention on uses of AI has focused of late on Anthropic’s Claude. In particular, Claude’s discovery of 23,000 potential security vulnerabilities across 1,000 Open Source Software products. With evidence like that, we should all assume that any publicly available software product we use has one or more security flaws....

Fostering Belongingness in a Corequisite Math Support Course

By Amy Scheerhorn As humans, we all need to feel like we belong. For students placed into developmental math, that sense of belonging may be missing. These students often feel out of place in a math class, which has negative implications for their academic success. A student’s sense of belonging impacts their attitudes, motivation, participation, engagement,...

Complimentary Angling

By Matt Beechan I look out over the water’s surface searching for signs of disturbance from below. The rain that is gently falling on the lake is making this exercise more challenging than usual. After a while, I notice a curious trout rise to the surface like it is gasping for a breath of the...

The Torching of the Department of Education: What’s at Stake and What You Can Do

By Dave Kung In the two months since the inauguration, education – including mathematics education – has been under attack like never before. Postdocs have had their pay withheld, math research institutes have cancelled programs, math ed researchers have had their funding pulled, federal staff (including mathematicians) have been fired at NSF1, and now the...

How Internships Helped Me Find My Path

By Jocelyn Ornelas-Munoz Throughout graduate school, I’ve been told repeatedly, “Focus on your research.” While I agree that graduate school is a time of deep academic exploration, it’s also a stepping stone to broader career opportunities and professional growth. One of the most valuable—and even life-changing—experiences of my PhD was participating in summer internships. These...

AI in Action: Charting New Paths through Enhancement, Creation, and Integration

By Lew Ludwig Author’s Note: Throughout this article, 'AI' refers specifically to generative AI unless stated otherwise. I will primarily discuss ChatGPT 4o, the free model, due to its widespread use with our students. In my last three posts, I've encouraged you to engage with AI to better grasp its capabilities and limitations, helping you...

Values Still Have Value

By the Math Values Editorial Board Math Values exists to explore the diverse perspectives and experiences of members of the mathematics community, broadly defined. The blog is centered on the MAA’s core values - Community, Inclusivity, Communication, and Teaching & Learning - because those values guide the organization and are central to who we are....

Math In Motion

By Gabrielle Birchak I grew up as a stage actress and jazz vocalist. In 1984, in high school, I was singing in a nine-member jazz group that Downbeat Magazine awarded as the best high school jazz combo in the nation. So, music was part of my existence from an early age. But, thanks to my...

Calculus for Teachers: The Definite Integral

By David Bressoud @dbressoud As of 2024, new Launchings columns appear on the third Tuesday of the month. Before Cauchy, integration was usually defined as the inverse process of differentiation. This creates some problems when then there is no nice, closed form for the anti-derivative. For example, asking Mathematica for the integral from 0 to x...

From Monologue to Dialogue: Engaging the MAA Community in AI Discussions

By Lew Ludwig When I first started this column over a year ago, I naively named it "There and Back Again: A Mathematician’s Tale of AI Exploration," a nod to Tolkien that I thought was a clever pun. I expected to explore generative AI and report back, complete with generating fun, Hobbit-esque images in a Shire-like...

Mathematics in Nature, Perseverance, and the Role of Serendipity

By John Adam As a young boy growing up in the English countryside, I never paid much attention to nature. Then, around the age of 12, I developed a passion for astronomy, sparked by the amateur astronomer, Patrick Moore, who hosted a BBC TV show called “The Sky At Night.” He even had his own...

1 2 3 4 5 6 … 40