Category Archives: Theoretical Mathematics

Topology in the Limelight

Topology is having a moment. Maybe not as much as this never-ending election season or this Pringles “ringle” with 40,000 retweets and counting (seriously, you should go look—it’s a self-supporting ring of potato chips, need I say more?), but it’s been getting more … Continue reading

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Medaling Mathematicians

You may consider the Fields Medal a boon to the mathematical community as it showcases amazing young mathematicians and brings math into the limelight. Or you may view the Fields Medal as an unfortunate reinforcement of the notion that mathematics … Continue reading

Posted in Events, Math Education, Mathematics and the Arts, Number Theory, people in math, Theoretical Mathematics, Uncategorized, women in math | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Mathematician Presents Flawed Proof – in a work of fiction

Following Evelyn’s last post about the new Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, I will now discuss the opposite of wild mathematical success. Depending on how excited you are about public speaking, the moments before giving a talk at a math conference may be … Continue reading

Posted in History of Mathematics, Mathematics and the Arts, people in math, Publishing in Math, Recreational Mathematics, Theoretical Mathematics | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Summer Reading List

My Summer Reading List   Having an industry job, I will not have any real change in my routine as summer hits. But I still think of summer as the season of reading for pleasure. So what are some new … Continue reading

Posted in Applied Math, Mathematics and the Arts, people in math, Recreational Mathematics, Theoretical Mathematics | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Crowd-Funded Mathematics

What if your research was funded by 100 strangers who had read your research proposal online and clicked “donate”? You’d feel responsible to write about your research in a more widely accessible way. You might pledge to provide monthly updates … Continue reading

Posted in Applied Math, Math Education, Theoretical Mathematics | 16 Comments

Discovering Proofs

Patrick Stevens is an undergraduate mathematics student at the University of Cambridge, and I’ve really been enjoying his blog recently. He’s been doing a series of posts about discovering proofs of standard real analysis theorems. He writes that the series … Continue reading

Posted in Math Education, Theoretical Mathematics | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Awesome K-12 Math Teachers Exist! And they have blogs.

I sometimes get tired of hearing about how “teachers (meaning K-12 teachers) just don’t understand this or that, or won’t try doing something new,” or are deficient in some way or another.  We often advise teachers to let go of … Continue reading

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Geometry and the Imagination

If you like geometric group theory or amazing pictures (but especially geometric group theory), you might want to start reading Geometry and the Imagination, written by University of Chicago mathematician Danny Calegari. I’ve been following it for a while, but … Continue reading

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Why Should We Fund Math Research?

As my co-blogger Brie Finegold mentioned last month, Cathy O’Neil of mathbabe.org has been writing about how MOOCs might change the face of math departments and, ultimately, how math research gets funded. O’Neil is concerned that without calculus classes to … Continue reading

Posted in Applied Math, Issues in Higher Education, people in math, Theoretical Mathematics | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Job Security Calculus: Reasoning about our futures

Most academics have a love/hate relationship to teaching, and especially teaching Calculus.  Prior to the first exam of the semester, it seems that everyone in the class is there for learning’s sake, discussing ideas, engaging in problem-solving.  But we worry … Continue reading

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