Education Commons^™

Art, Math, And Physics; All About For, Chris Brownell, Steve Pauls

The STEAM Journal

Anish Kapoor’s public sculpture “Cloud Gate” and Frame of Reference.

Ecoscience + Art Initiative: Designing A New Paradigm For College Education, Scholarship, And Service, Changwoo Ahn

The STEAM Journal

The paper presents a new initiative, EcoScience + Art, which blooms at George Mason University. The creator explains the background, history, and recent activities of the initiative, and also introduces an on-going special project called “The Rain Project”, a student participatory project to design, construct, and monitor a green infrastructure (i.e., floating wetland) for sustainable stormwater management on campus. The special project is geared to design and present a new paradigm to integrate college education, scholarship, and service. The relevance of the initiative and the special project to STEAM education is discussed.

Putting The Team In Steam: The Art Of Robot Making, Teresa Walker, David Thompson

The STEAM Journal

What began as a life partnership has evolved into an early learning STEAM team. Artist, David Thompson, uses science, technology, engineering and math, on a daily basis, to create robots and much more. Teresa Day Walker is an assistant professor of early childhood education. Through necessity they discovered their combined talents could be used to promote STEAM in early childhood. David and Teri teamed up to provide a nearly impromptu robot making demonstration for 100 kindergarten students. After reading their co-authored book, Robot Hide and Seek, both, clay based and 3-D modeled images were used to generate interest and …

Guidelines For Good Mathematical Writing, Francis Su

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

Communicating mathematics well is an important part of doing mathematics. Many of us know from writing papers or giving talks that communicating effectively not only serves our audience but also clarifies and structures our own thinking. There is an art and elegance to good writing that every writer should strive for. And writing, as a work of art, can bring a person great personal satisfaction.

Within the MAA, we value exposition and mathematical communication. In this column, I’m sharing the advice I give my students to help them write well. There are more extensive treatments (e.g., see Paul Halmos’s How …

Extended Book Review: Really Big Numbers, By Richard Evan Schwartz; The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life Of Paul Erdös, By Deborah Heiligman; The Short Seller, By Elissa Brent Weissman, Gizem Karaali

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

The genre of math lit for children is not huge, but it is growing. My kid loves the early reader books by my friend and colleague Julie Glass (A Dollar for Penny (1998), The Fly On the Ceiling (2000)). I found Izolda Fotiyeva’s Math with Mom (2003) too late for my daughter but will definitely read it with my son. For a neat twist on the traditional alphabet book, I recommend The Technical Alphabet (2014) by the engineer sisters Lavanya and Melissa Jawaharlal. More recently a colleague introduced me to Laura Overdeck’s Bedtime Math series; these will soon join …

On Similarities And Differences Between Proving And Problem Solving, Milos Savic

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

A link between proving and problem solving has been established in the literature [5, 21]. In this paper, I discuss similarities and differences between proving and problem solving using the Multidimensional Problem-Solving Framework created by Carlson and Bloom [2] with Livescribepen data from a previous study [13]. I focus on two participants’ proving processes: Dr. G, a topologist, and L, a mathematics graduate student. Many similarities between the framework and the proving processes of Dr. G and L were revealed, but there were also some differences. In addition, there were some distinct differences between the proving actions of the …

To The Mathematical Beach, Francis Su

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

What context am I missing that hinders my connection with my students? How often do I take the time to get to know their backgrounds? What are the primary experiences that shaped them, and do those present obstacles or opportunities for learning? And in what ways does the mathematical beach say “open to all” but still feel restricted?

These questions appear unrelated to mathematics, but if we ignore their effects, some of our students will not flourish.

Summer Cleaning: (Digital) Organizing Basics For Mathematicians, Gizem Karaali

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

At the beginning of last summer I wrote about a neat trick to make your summer a productive one. And I heard from some of you who took me up on this suggestion; it seems that this actually works for many people! So, this year, for those who are willing to experiment with new ideas, I have another summer recommendation: Let us clean!

On The Persistence And Attrition Of Women In Mathematics, Katrina Piatek-Jimenez

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The purpose of this study was to investigate what motivates women to choose mathematics as an undergraduate major and to further explore what shapes their future career goals, paying particular attention to their undergraduate experiences and their perceptions of the role of gender in these decisions. A series of semi-structured, individual interviews were conducted with twelve undergraduate women mathematics majors who were attending either a large public university or a small liberal arts college. This study found that strong mathematical identities and enjoyment of mathematics heavily influenced their decisions to major in mathematics. At the career selection stage, these women …