JPBM Communications Award Lecture, JMM 2023
Added 2023-04-01 04:20:40 +0000 UTCHey everyone,
Early this year I had the honor of receiving a communications award from the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics, along with Jordan Ellenberg. A few of you asked if the talk I gave associated with this in January would be public, and I just got the file from the AMS with permission to post it, so here you go. Enjoy!
Grant
Comments
"Are the factors for 9,991 correct?" – I got confused about that too, but it’s actually two separate questions on different lines. One is asking what the product of those factors is, and the other is asking what the factors of 9991 are.
Jacob Rus
2023-04-02 23:12:48 +0000 UTCNice talk! Are the factors for 9,991 correct? Also, like the first questioner in the video, I feel like a thing that a lot of teaching in math (and related areas, especially my own thing, computer science) tends to de-emphasize is the role of failure in learning. I always remember things I did wrong, then fixed, much more than I remember things I got right the first time. A key skill for programmers is how not to take failure personally but rather profit from it, since you will do it so often. I have to think that something like this holds in all problem solving domains, mathematics included. Presentations that show dead ends and multiple paths to the final answer have always been really interesting to me, especially since so much text book material in our fields tends to make the end result seem handed down from on high. This could be called "the Dark Souls principle" ... if you are familiar with that video game. 🙂 Finally, when you say "CS explanations, despite addressing a topic just as technical, almost always offer some clear motivation." I think you might be giving the CS people a bit too much credit. But maybe things have gotten better since I was in school during pre-historic times.
Peter Su
2023-04-02 19:31:18 +0000 UTCIn my experience, students will say "I thought I liked math until I took [insert class where they actually had to *understand* a concept and not just memorize steps for how to do each problem]"
Raiz
2023-04-01 17:48:52 +0000 UTCKudos! Glad to see all the hard work is paying off :D
Seras
2023-04-01 05:41:46 +0000 UTCReally enjoying this! So helpful to think about with respect to how I present math topics! I'm 51:21 in and wondering ... are the Transfer #'s swapped?
Ron Goodman
2023-04-01 05:21:16 +0000 UTC
