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The Birth Of A Review Or (How Villani Both Reinforces And Challenges Our Beliefs About Mathematics) A Review Of Cédric Villani’S Birth Of A Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure, Manon Leblanc

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In the book Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure, Cédric Villani paints a portrait of himself, from the (dare I say) obsessed mathematician who works until the wee hours of the night, to the ordinary citizen, enjoying an impressive variety of music, to the slightly odd man sporting an ornamental spider daily. From Lyon to Paris, through the despair of not being able to eat quality cheese, Villani takes us on a journey, revisiting the path that led him to win the Fields Medal. He takes us back in time and punctuates his account with anecdotes or stories of …

Overcoming Misconceptions About Probability A Review Of David J. Hand’S The Improbability Principle, Keith Gallagher

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Have you ever struck up a conversation with a stranger in a coffee shop and been surprised to learn that you were born in the same week, but in different years? Or maybe you have that one annoying friend who always seems to win raffles and lotteries even though you never win anything, and you just can’t figure out how they always get so lucky? Or perhaps, just for fun, you visited a psychic one day, and you were shocked by how much they were able to tell you about yourself. In The Improbability Principle, David J. Hand explains …

Studying Flourishing And Non-Flourishing In Mathematics A Review Of Francis Su’S Mathematics For Human Flourishing With Reflections By Christopher Jackson, Ryan Banow, Nat Banting, Egan Chernoff

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Dr. Francis Su uses an autobiography (or a dual autobiography) to discuss an issue in mathematics: it is often non-flourishing. When crafting this Euler Book Prize winner, Su and his co-author, Christopher Jackson, drew on their own personal experiences to educate and inspire readers to want to do (and teach) mathematics.

Learning To Avoid Luck Traps In Contexts Of Uncertainty A Review Of Jeffrey Rosenthal’S Knock On Wood: Luck, Chance, And The Meaning Of Everything, Vincent Martin, Mathieu Thibault

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In the field of probability instruction, much has been written about the increasingly important role of uncertainty and probability in our everyday lives. This work similarly highlights the key role that probability plays in a growing number of professional areas.

(Re)Humanizing Mathematics With Story A Review Of Keith Devlin’S Finding Fibonacci: The Quest To Rediscover The Forgotten Mathematical Genius Who Changed The World, Cynthia Nicol

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Indigenous scholar Richard van Camp of the Dogrib Nation shares how “a great story reminds us of what it means to be human” (van Camp in Galloway, 2020). Keith Devlin’s book, Finding Fibonacci: The Quest to Rediscover the Forgotten Mathematical Genius Who Changed the World, does just that – reminding us what it means to be human, but in this case through mathematics. In Finding Fibonacci, Devlin shares his story and journey to learn more about mathematician Leonardo Pisano (Fibonacci) and Leonardo’s manuscript Liber Abbaci (Book of Calculation), one of the first manuscripts written on practical arithmetic in …

The Hocus Pocus Of Martin Gardner A Review Of Martin Gardner’S Undiluted Hocus-Pocus: The Autobiography Of Martin Gardner, Neil J. Hatfield

The Mathematics Enthusiast

I have always enjoyed games, especially when incorporated into the classroom. I can still remember the game my fifth-grade teachers had us play to explore colonizing a new world. One of the most impactful games I’ve played is SET®, which has become a go-to for mathematics teachers as a means for exploring geometry, combinatorics, probability, statistics, and vector spaces (Larson Quinn et al., 1999; Waddell Jr., 2017). I first learned the game in the seventh grade and continue to play the game today. How many sets do you see in Figure 1?

Arithmetic: Craft Or Art? A Recursive (Re)View Of Paul Lockhart’S A Mathematician’S Lament And Arithmetic, Jennifer S. Thom

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Paul Lockhart is a former computer programmer, elementary teacher, research mathematician, university professor, and somewhat more recently a K-12 mathematics teacher and author. Lockhart’s first written composition appeared two decades ago in 2002. All of 25 pages, his essay A Mathematician's Lament began like this:

A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In this dream he finds himself in a society where music education has been made mandatory ... Educators, school systems, and the state are put in charge of this vital project. Studies are commissioned, committees are formed, and decisions are made—all without the advice or participation of a …

Things Behind Bayes’ Theorem A Review Of Sharon Bertsch Mcgrayne’S The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Theorem Allowed To Decipher The Enigma Code, To Pursue The Russian Submarines And To Emerge Triumphant From Two Centuries Of Controversy From A Statistics Education Perspective, Ernesto Sanchez, Nathalia Morgado, Eleazar Silvestre

The Mathematics Enthusiast

A feeling emerges from reading McGrayne’s book expressed as a paraphrase of a verse from Hamlet: There are more things behind Bayes’ theorem, Horatio, than dreamt of in your philosophy. The book tells a story of the birth and survival of an idea around which social enterprises, personal odysseys, and human passions are masterfully woven by the author. The book has 17 chapters distributed in five parts and two annexes. These parts reveal a narrative structure worthy of Propp: The hero of the story (Bayes’ theorem) is born and raised normally but rejected later. It is forced to act …

Encounters With “Love And Math” A Belated Review Of Edward Frenkel’S Love And Math: The Heart Of Hidden Reality, Rina Zazkis

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In “Love and Math” the author intertwines his personal experiences as a student of mathematics and as a research mathematician with an exposition of modern mathematics, focusing on its elegance and beauty. Much is said in previous reviews (e.g., Grosholz, 2015) of this New York Times bestseller and winner of the Euler Book Prize from the Mathematical Association of America. All praise the author for his fascinating narratives in which he reveals the joy of intellectual discovery and provides a passionate account of exciting ideas of modern mathematics. There is no need in repetition, so this review is rather personal. …

Juicy Nuggets With A Strong Core A Review Of Jordan Ellenberg’S How Not To Be Wrong: The Power Of Mathematical Thinking, Taras Gula

The Mathematics Enthusiast

How Not to Be Wrong is a wonderful and entertaining romp through a field of intriguing and thought-provoking anecdotes and social conundrums in which mathematical thinking and mathematics are revealed in all their messiness and power. While reading Jordan Ellenberg’s weave of stories for the first time, I found myself retelling them to as many individuals in my social circles as I could. Though the intent of the book is quite serious, [its goal is to show that mathematical thinking is accessible and useful to those who have not mastered complex mathematics, that mathematical thinking can lead to profound insights …

Mathematics Education (And Other) Perspectives A Review Of Nassim Taleb’S The Black Swan: The Impact Of The Highly Improbable, Gale Russell

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The biggest problem I have with reviewing The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Taleb, 2010) is deciding from what perspective to write. There are a number of lenses through which I considered this work in relation to mathematics education: the Associate Professor, always searching for new resources for mathematics education classes; the teacher, always looking for new messages and ways of speaking to students (including pre-service teachers) about what mathematics is, what purposes it serves, and what limitations it inherently carries; the learner-teacher, always looking for a greater depth of understanding of the mathematics we are charged …

Zero To Infinity A Review Of Charles Seife’S Zero: The Biography Of A Dangerous Idea, Douglas Mcdougall

The Mathematics Enthusiast

“Nil”, “Nunca”, “Nada”, “Nil”, “Nothing”, “Zero”. Sounds of a multilingual class of mathematics, perhaps. No, it is the sounds around the family table card game as we all declare the number of tricks that we would like to take in a card game called Wizard. The speaker is telling the scorekeeper that they would not like to take any tricks. They would like to take “zero” tricks as if they could gather the zero cards. We all know that we do not want any tricks and we do our best not to take any if we declare that we want …

Department Of Mathematical Sciences Newsletter, Spring 2023, University Of Montana--Missoula. Department Of Mathematical Sciences

Newsletters from the Department of Mathematical Sciences at UM

Nontraditional Math Majors / Elizabeth Gillaspy -- From Crayons to Co-Degree / Cory Palmer -- George F. Votruba 1934 - 2023 -- Notes from the Chair / John Bardsley -- GOALS 2022 at UM: Report on an International Workshop for Graduate Students / Patrick Kreitzberg -- Gloria Hewitt Featured on EvenQuads Card -- Jon Graham’s Other Job: Mathcounts Coach & Mentor / Matt Roscoe -- Would you like to try a Mathcounts Problem? -- Update on the Honor Roll of Donors -- Degree Recipients 2022-2023 -- Spring 2023 Scholarships & Awards -- Diana M. Thomas, BA '91, Wins Math Research …

Algorithms And Mathematics Education A Response And Review Of Hannah Fry’S Hello World: Being Human In The Age Of Algorithms, Joshua T. Hertel

The Mathematics Enthusiast

At the outset, Dr. Hannah Fry’s book Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms is an engaging survey of how algorithms are being used in modern life. The book is written for a general audience with a focus on concepts and principles. As such, the narrative does not dig deeply into the details of any particular topic but instead offers a snapshot of how algorithms reside within a variety of contexts in the modern world. Through relatable examples, Dr. Fry builds a narrative that explains how algorithms are used as tools to predict, influence, augment, and mimic human …

Uncertainty In An Uncertain World A Review Of Ian Stewart’S Do Dice Play God?: The Mathematics Of Uncertainty, Luis Saldanha

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In addition to the title’s cheeky play on the famous words God does not play dice with the universe (famously attributed to Einstein), Ian Stewart’s Do Dice Play God is a fascinating tour de force that embeds the discipline of statistics and probability within an informative and insightful socio-historical account of its development. Stewart characterizes the science of statistics and probability as the mathematical quantification of uncertainty—a very useful and productive way to think about a discipline with a reputation for being notoriously difficult and often counter-intuitive for people to understand. But his account goes beyond merely providing such an …

Thinking Essays A Review Of Daniel Tammet’S Thinking In Numbers: On Life, Love, Meaning, And Math, Ann Arden

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Daniel Tammet’s Thinking in Numbers: On Life, Love, Meaning, and Math (2012) is composed of 25 essays that share his views and experiences of mathematics, connections he makes between mathematics and poetry, and biographical stories. He is a writer, a linguist and a tutor who was born in London, England and lives in Paris, France.

Popularizing Mathematics Education Through Bad Drawings A Review Of Ben Orlin’S Math With Bad Drawings, Nat Banting, Ryan Banow, Egan Chernoff

The Mathematics Enthusiast

From cover to cover, Ben Orlin’s Math with Bad Drawings is modest. By this we do not mean to suggest that the book underwhelms in its contributions to the popularization of mathematics. In fact, we take the exact opposite as true, and the commendations from prominent popularizers of mathematics such as Steven Strogatz, Hannah Fry, and John Urschel that are printed on the book jacket provide us ample evidence. By modest we mean the book cloaks its potent insights on mathematics and mathematics education in self-effacement. Of course, this modesty is entirely intentional, and employed by Orlin with pinpoint precision. …

Conceptions Of Zero A Review Of Amir D. Aczel’S Finding Zero: A Mathematician's Odyssey To Uncover The Origins Of Numbers, Sean Chorney

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In the 2003 Pixar animation Finding Nemo, a clownfish named Marlin is an overprotective father, and for good reason: he has recently gone through the trauma of losing both his wife and all their fertilized eggs save one. Nemo is his only remaining offspring, a son. On Nemo’s first day of school, he gets caught in a fishing net and is taken far away. Marlin spends the rest of the movie looking for Nemo. He gets to know a variety characters in his search, some providing comic relief, some providing leads. But in each interaction Marlin learns a more …

Guest Editorial, Egan J. Chernoff

The Mathematics Enthusiast

No abstract provided.

Debating Mathematics Curriculum A Review Of Andrew Hacker’S The Math Myth And Other Stem Delusions, Samuel Otten

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Broadly speaking, school mathematics has been placed in a double bind. From state policymakers, there is the culmination of decades of increasing requirements to teach more mathematics, which now often means a requirement of four full years of mathematics in high school or every student progressing through at least a second course in algebra (Remillard et al., 2017). From the mathematics education community, there is growing consensus around the call to ban tracking (e.g., National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2018; National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics & TODOS, 2016) because of the known harms of identifying and segregating students …

Numerate Life For Whom? A Non-Book-Review Of John Allen Paulos’S A Numerate Life: A Mathematician Explores The Vagaries Of Life, His Own And Probably Yours, Ofer Marmur

The Mathematics Enthusiast

A common, widespread view on the field of mathematics entails that “mathematics is dry as dust [and] as exciting as a telephone book” (Davis & Hersh, 1981, p. 169), and that the professional mathematician is merely “a kind of calculator” (Krull, 1987, p. 48). Even more provocatively, mathematics is conceived by many of the general public as a “deadend” discipline in which all questions have already been answered, where nothing worthwhile is left for further investigation (Movshovitz-Hadar, 2008). However, mathematics is an active, growing, open-ended field – a fact which can be illustrated, amongst others, by the exponential growth in …

Baking Up Mathematics A Review Of Eugenia Cheng’S How To Bake 𝝅: An Edible Exploration Of The Mathematics Of Mathematics, Katryne Dubeau

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Mathematics – the word alone can strike fear into the hearts of students, parents, and educators alike. This emotional response seems to be not only acceptable, but almost expected and, should you differ, then you are considered either a genius or a bit insane. “How could someone like math?”, they think.

A Math Ed Take On A Love-Hate Relationship A Review Of Reuben Hersh And Vera John-Steiner’S Loving + Hating Mathematics: Challenging The Myths Of Mathematical Life, Jennifer Holm

The Mathematics Enthusiast

I found that Loving + Hating Mathematics: Challenging the Myths of Mathematical Life ended up being an interesting choice for me to write a review on from the perspective of a mathematics educator. My research has focused on the perceptions that individuals bring about mathematics to a teacher education program. I have found it interesting that every year the majority of the future teachers either focus on the negatives of mathematics or the rules and formulas that they see as the foundation (Holm, 2018). Rarely am I told about the beauty and elegance of the subject that seems to drive …

A Math Ed Take On Humble Humour A Review Of Matt Parker’S Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong In The Real World, Alayne Armstrong

The Mathematics Enthusiast

If anything, it was a few years of teaching grade eight home economics classes that made the situation very clear to me. There were the spectacular cooking disasters, like the group that while making a chocolate cake from scratch somehow switched the measurements for the salt and the sugar. Not only did they end up with a product that even a growing grade eight boy wouldn’t eat, but the cake actually erupted in the oven while it was baking. But there were also the smaller, more telling moments. I’d see a group from across the room that had come to …

Woo-Hoo! The Mathematics And Education Of The D’Oh-Nut A Review Of Simon Singh’S The Simpsons And Their Mathematical Secrets, Jamie S. Pyper

The Mathematics Enthusiast

I am a mathematics educator working in a Faculty of Education, at a mid-sized university. I have degrees in mathematics, teaching, and education related to the teaching and learning of mathematics. I also have twenty years of experience with school boards as a secondary school mathematics teacher and department head. It is from these experiences, knowledge, and professional practice that I approached this book review—from a place of how I see the world around me and work to understand it. I love thinking about and working to understand teachers’ beliefs, problem solving, and professional learning in problem solving contexts, and …

Queering The Stats A Review Of David Spiegelhalter’S The Art Of Statistics: Learning From Data, Nenad Radakovic

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The goal of this review is to explore The Art of Statistics using a mathematics education perspective and to illuminate the ways that it can be used as a resource in math instruction by students, preservice teachers, and math educators in general. I take the approach that the teaching and learning of mathematics is a part of the complex system comprising of many “interacting agents” (Davis, 2018, p. 77), such as students, teacher, curricula, and technology. The content of the book is a potential resource in the classroom, a potential part of the complex network. Echoing Jorge Louis Borges’ claim …

What Mathematics Educators Can Gain From Silver’S Approach To Humanizing Mathematical Predictions A Review Of Nate Silver’S The Signal And The Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’T, Dov Zazkis

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The book The Signal and The Noise; Why So Many Predictions Fail - But Some Don’t is, as its name implies, a book about predictions in a wide range of fields including weather, sports-betting, elections, and economic predictions. Rather than focus solely on the mathematics of prediction in each field, it places just as much emphasis on the role of people that make predictions. Thus, the book is about the human process of making predictions, the many factors that affect their accuracy, and how these factors interact with each other. Silver’s (2012) approach highlights that because the person making predictions …

The Siren Call Of Calculus A Review Of Steven Strogatz’S Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals The Secrets Of The Universe, Wes Maciejewski

The Mathematics Enthusiast

I hate calculus. Which is a lie: I secretly love it. I enjoy teaching it, drawing intricate diagrams of where the definition of the derivative comes from, stumping my students on convoluted trigonometric integrals with solutions dependent on partial fractions, hammering mnemonics for the derivative rules—all the joys of teaching calculus. And I enjoyed learning it, too. Well, not failing it the first time, but after that. I long for my undergraduate time spent in the reading room of Rutherford South re-arranging integrals à la Fubini’s Theorem, the massive lecture halls of anxious engineering students copying every stroke of chalk …

Statistical Literacy – The Golden Rules A Review Of Tim Harford’S The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules To Make Sense Of Statistics, Stephanie Budgett, Amy Renelle

The Mathematics Enthusiast

As statistics educators, our overarching goal is to instill in our students an appreciation for the stories that can be told from data. Storytelling, however, is never straightforward. Surely, we can remember times where we have been in the thrall of an experienced raconteur with a penchant to up-sell narratives with a healthy sprinkling of imagination and exaggeration in order to pique the interest of their readers or listeners. Given we are living in a “post-truth” world, where “alternative facts” and “fake news” permeate the airwaves, equipping students with the skills to distinguish fact from fiction is more important than …

Connections, 2022, University Of Montana--Missoula. Mansfield Library

Connections

No abstract provided.