Last week, on a train from Paris to Barcelona, a stranger sat down and started chatting with us. Why?
He saw my spouse working on some Putnam problems & turns out he is a mathematician at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Barcelona Tech).
Math brings people together in some unexpected ways.
Today is the first day of my sixth year as associate chair of my department. 😱Time flies in a way that is utterly unreal!
Sunset over Paris
Here’s a lovely sunset from Paris. Hope everyone is doing well. 🇫🇷
Today is one of my favorite days in my Intro Linear Algebra class: We are going to work on Activities about the PageRank algorithm and find out what it has to do with eigen-stuff. teambasedinquirylearning.github.io/linear-algeb...
Thanks, Josh.
Yes, arctan. Shockingly slow convergence!
But still a “that’s neat” problem.
Today in calculus 2, we used a polynomial of degree 20,000,000,001 to approximately pi. #ThanksDesmos
Today on Grading for Growth, @katemath.bsky.social writes a tribute to her mentor and alternative grading pioneer George McNulty.
Today at the Grading for Growth blog: "Lessons about Alternative Grading from George McNulty" by Kate Owens
🔗gradingforgrowth.com/p/lessons-about-alternat...
Thank you to @dccmath.bsky.social and @roberttalbert.bsky.social for giving me the opportunity to write.
Seventh grader and Mom posing with medals happy to be at the finish line of a 5-mile (8K) race
Kid & I have been running a 5K race every month for over a year, but today’s race was an 8K! #ProudMomma moment because kid won his age group (M0-14) for the very first time. 🥲😍 🏆
🗓️ 33 days til our next race.
Genuinely feel like what works somewhere probably won’t work here because reasons.
But what didn’t work elsewhere won’t be on my “try this instead!” list
Someone better organized than me should pull together an MAA Mathfest session for next cycle — with a forgiving peer group who wants to know what *hasn’t* worked at your campus 💡
I’m happy to give you a 10 min Zoom call to let you know what I know, and if it would be useful I would be happy to share a better polished version with your committee of folks
“All I know is I know nothing” but also no one I’ve talked to has figured it out either 🤔
Comforting to know I’m not the only one struggling with all this. I could give a two-hour talk tomorrow on “Things we’ve tried that haven’t worked”
sigh
Happy Friday to everyone except the textbook company rep who sent me five emails this week the last one starting with “[Name], are you even getting my emails?! I would love to chat but you haven’t replied…”
I went to a reaccreditation conference over the summer months and felt the same. Now wondering if they supplied double caff’d coffee as a sneaky buy-in strategy. (If so, yikes it worked?!)
@johnestesmath.bsky.social has been doing some stuff
The Citadel (a public, four-year military college in Charleston SC) is conducting an external search for Chair of their Mathematical Sciences department.
I taught for that department in 2010-11 and would be happy to answer your questions. ➡
jobs.citadel.edu/cw/en-us/job...
you can change the URL to whatever. width=2.0 is preferred printing size, given in inches; should be same as height.
did you know you can make a QR code in LaTeX?
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pstricks}
\usepackage{pst-barcode}
\begin{document}
\begin{pspicture}(45mm,45mm)
\psbarcode{http://linear.tbil.org}{eclevel=H width=2.0 height=2.0}{qrcode}
\end{pspicture}
\end{document}
I’ve had the opportunity to work with some folks from NISS (National Institute for Student Success) over the last few months. They’re an amazing group.
niss.gsu.edu/about-us/
I think we have the same Lodge
I’ve never worn regalia! But if it were in my office and I were cold I might wear it.
I keep telling him he should 😆 He keeps saying no. But next weekend’s 8K will be our 8th race together in 2023! 🏃♀️ 🏃♂️
I’m keeping a running tally, I’m ahead of him by 6.5 minutes 🤪
Have an 8K race next weekend. And training for a half marathon in January! 😱
Maybe 40 mi/month which isn’t a lot for some folks — but it’s a lot for me. 🙂
And I’ve thought about a lot of math & a lot about teaching. And done years more of both. Also I think I know less about each than I used to know.
Maybe this means i should be approaching retirement at of all the things! Or it’s approaching me 😬
Since I last wrote these types of messages, I’ve become a lot more of a runner. Like I’m running way more miles per month. Also they’re all at a slower pace per mile. 🤔
Today I presented at an AMS meeting. Never thought I would do that again! Favorite thing was seeing old friends (and making a couple new ones, too.)