Sorry for the unannounced hiatus that has now lasted for four years, but our host and producer Sam Hansen has had a lot of life events and changes that led them to not be able to devote the time they needed to making the show. We are planning on coming back very soon, but until then please enjoy this episode about the Mathematics of Voting from the podcast Carry the Two made by the Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation where Sam is the new Director of Communications and Engagement.
We in the United States are deep in the middle of a major national election, and over half of the world’s population also have elections in 2024. This is why Carry the Two is going to focus on the intersection of mathematics and democracy for our new season.
In this episode, the first episode of our mathematics and democracy season, we speak with mathematician Ismar Volić of Wellesley College and Director of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy and Victoria Mooers, an economics PhD student at Columbia University. We discuss what mathematics has to say about our current plurality voting system, how switching to preference ranking votings systems could limit polarization and negative campaigning, and why too much delegation causes problems for those pushing for Liquid Democracy.
The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348
#BlackInMathWeek
Nov 09, 2020
On this episode of Relatively Prime, Michole Enjoli and Noelle Sawyer take over for Black in Math Week. They talk to Brea Ratliff and José Vilson, two Black math educators, and discuss what it’s like to be Black in math, what they would say to people making common false statements about Black students in math, and better hopes and dreams for Black students.
Black in Math week is November 8th – 13th, 2020! It’s a week on Twitter to celebrate community among and uplift Black mathematicians. Check us out @BlackInMath for updates!
José is located in New York City and is the founder and executive director of EDUcolor. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Teachers College at Columbia University in Sociology and Education.
We talk a bit about Afrofuturism in this episode. If you’re interested in checking out more on Afrofuturism, try SpaceBox, a STEM escape room to save astronauts from a virus, and this special minizine from Bitten Magazine!
This is Relatively rime Black in Math Week in the mathematical domain. I’m one of your host, Michole Enjoli.
Noelle:
And I’m Noelle Sawyer
Noelle:
We’e here as a part of Black and Math Week to talk to some Black math educators. I’m actually an assistant professor of math at Southwestern university in Georgetown, Texas. So I, myself, am a math educator, I’m from The Bahamas and I’ve also got a few teachers in my family line there. So education has got a special place in my heart.
Michole:
And again, Michole Enjoli, I’m a mathematician, educator ,and STEM edutainment producer. I originally hailed from Atlanta, Georgia, and Seattle, Washington, but now I’m in Ann Arbor working on my PhD in math education. I also have a lot of educators in my family and I always like to make it be known that I’m an educator before mathematician.
Noelle:
I talked to Bria Ratliff for this podcast and I asked her how she introduces herself to strangers. If you’re sitting next to a stranger in the before times, right. When we did that and someone and someone asked you, like, what do you do? How do you answer them?
Brea:
Um , generally I say that I’m a mathematics educator and can we go back for a minute? Cause the before times, and the Hunger Games was reference just really gives me life right now. (laughs) Um, that that pretty much is mathematics or STEM educator, I think is probably the best collective term for all the things that I do. And I’m involved with. I have been an administrator and a coach and currently delving deeper into research and have been a research coordinator and whatnot for a while. And I have my own business also, I’m consulting on mathematics and STEM, but at the heart of what I do, I am a mathematics educator.
Noelle:
Brea is in the math education doctoral program at Auburn university. Right now. She’s also the founder of Me to the Power of Three, which specializes in curriculum development and designing educational programs. They’ve done work for the Dallas Cowboys stadium and she’s a past president of the Benjamin Banneker association.
Michole:
And I took the time to talk to José Bilson and I also asked him, because he lives in New York city. If he’s ever on the train or walking down the street, how does he introduce himself as strangers?
José:
Usually I tell them my name is José Vilson. I’ve been, before this year I was a math teacher for the better part of 15 years. In addition, I am also the executive director of EduColor an organization dedicated to race, class and education, but also as a proud father, husband, and any number of other roles that I take on a daily basis.
Michole:
And Noelle, let me tell you, José is a dope math educator, but he’s also the founder and executive director of EduColor color. And he’s currently pursuing a PhD at Teacher’s college at Columbia university in sociology and education. But before he was doing his PhD, I thought he was already a doctor because we met a couple of years ago at the CIME conference at MSRI. So CIME is a conference in mathematics education and MSRI is a mathematical sciences research Institute. And for anyone who’s listening, I’ll say this again at the end, please follow José on Twitter. You will be enlightened every single moment,
Brea:
Even though Brea and José both have these really cool jobs and backgrounds, I was kind of curious
Michole:
What were you’re curious about?
Brea:
Whether or not people still make the statement that all math people are tired of hearing. Do people still respond and say, Oh, I hate math. (Laughing)
Brea:
I’m sure you hear that all the time. It’s, it’s, it’s still such a pervasive thought across, um, society. So I think we really have to do better about the messaging with that. Admittedly though, there is, there is some eliteism that does come with saying that you are a math person and I think we’d be lying if we didn’t recognize that. But at the same time, if we’re wanting more people to come into the mathematics space, then we have to really find ways to help them understand. There is really no such thing as a math person. That’s that is false.
Michole:
You know, I’ve always been a solidarity with folks who hate math. Like even though I know I personally have done well, well, I can only say that up until undergrad, but for the most part I’ve done well in math. It’s really reasonable to know why people have hard feelings around it. Now I think about a lot of the violence that can happen in a math classroom, especially, especially for Black students in America. You know, their bodies are often looked at in similar ways that we see on the streets. We think about police reform and police brutality that’s happening to Black people.
Noelle:
So when we talk about policing Black bodies in the classroom, like, are we also talking about the actual police here.
Michole:
In some instances we are. And if you were to do a quick YouTube search, which I honestly hate to put this out here to even have to put anyone to witnesses this, but you can find several videos where there are police officers, throwing Black students to the ground in a math classroom, in a math classroom. Why the police even there in the first place in these Black communities, and not even always in Black communities, you know, and we see that happening, but there’s also things happening in a way that we’re teaching math education. That’s very behavioral and policing the way that Black students show up and do mathematics in the classroom. There’s a study that I’ve read before in my own research that shows, the second grade teachers were significantly more likely to judge their Black female students’ math abilities solely on their behavior. Second grade Noelle.
Noelle:
Wow
Michole:
they said the students were getting up moving or whatever, and they’re not answering their questions all the time. We talking about second graders who were always running around, having to use the bathroom every 10 minutes. They were being policed way more in that way than on their knowledge. So me and José talked about this in relation to his work that he does with EduColor.
José:
In the service of Black children. I think that’s pretty much where we center so much of our work because we work directly with them and specifically talking about how anti-Blackness shows up even amongst people of color, generally, even amongst Black folks, right? The idea that for example, our pedagogies have to be super regimented and make sure everybody like, sits in rows in aisles to address those kids, make sure that they like follow whatever that, that like a champion nonsense is. And I know the name of it. I just rather not validate it, but I think, I think it’s just so fascinating because like so many of the schools that educators of color are being pushed towards now are some of the same schools that their business model is based off segregation. It’s very much like we will serve your children. We will give them resources through our hedge fund managers. But that in turn you have to sacrifice their liberties. You have to sacrifice the idea that they deserve to be able to be in control of their hands and control their eyes and control of their own voices. Like they have to sacrifice those levels of control. And it’s not to say that public schools don’t often have similar situations, but it is to say that the things that you can get away with when it’s not as accountable to the public, you’re able then to push down Black kids because you know that the general public doesn’t really care that much about Black kids humanity, as much as they care about pretending like they’ve solved some sort of gap.
Noelle:
And honestly, how could they have solved anything when here we are during COVID and surprise, all of these problems are even worse now. And Brea also had something to say about that.
Brea:
There are children every day who are just getting further and further behind academically because COVID has exacerbated this opportunity that, that we’ve had for a very, very long time. And disproportionately it is affecting Black and Brown children. It’s affecting children who are in poor communities. But the thing is we, we, we knew that. And if we, the frustrating thing is that we’ve, many of us have been trying to tell people that and talk about how we could address these issues. Well, before we got here and we’re still here, um, (sigh).
Noelle:
I’ve found that oftentimes people who don’t actually want to help think that by acknowledging an issue exists, like they have done their part, (laughter) Right? Like, Hey, yes, you, what I do agree. I see that there are these problems and then they just want to move on in the meeting.
Brea:
It’s like, uh, that did nothing for me, but add more salt to this wound that I, Yeah.
Michole:
You know, there’s already so many barriers in place for Black students as it is. And even from my own experience as a mathematician and as a Black woman for all the 26 years I’ve been alive. It’s constantly feeling like to get all the things I want in life. I’m having to work twice as hard for what a lot of white folks are getting, or have.
Noelle:
Brea actually mentioned this as well. And Michole you’re a grad student, I’m just out of grad school. She mentioned that as a grad student she always felt like she had to put her best foot forward all the time.
Speaker 3:
I also felt this pressure to be Benjamin Banneker association Me to the Power of Three, Brea Ratliff all the time and not make mistakes. And, and yeah, so I, I did, I did feel that way. So I, the other major thing for me, I am a Christian and I’m a believer. And so my faith is at the bedrock of all of these things for me. And so having to lean on my faith in a new way was, was first I think the most important thing, being able to say, to say out loud that this is what I’m experiencing, what I’m feeling and that it’s real was the second of being able to reach out to others for the support that I needed is helping me. Cause we’re, we’re still working through this.
Noelle:
Yeah.
Michole:
A word. I so feel where she’s coming from. It’s almost like there’s this thin line between the goals that I may want in this world as a Black female, mathematician and having to be a perfectionist in which one of those are really tiring all the time.
Noelle:
I would even say both of those are really tired all the time, right.
Michole:
I agree (laughter)
Noelle:
Brea actually pointed out something, that’s amazing. Her advisor is actually a Black woman. And so that gives her the space to feel vulnerable while she’s in grad school. So shout out to Dr. Strutchens
Brea:
Before even being in this grad school space, I think just being a Black woman, a successful Black woman, there’s, there’s so much armor that you have to put on to be successful in a space. And this is one of the first times in a long time where I have the opportunity to kind of like take my armor off. And it feels, it feels foreign. I don’t take it off for everybody. (laughter) But it feels foreign to have someone say that this space right now is a space where it’s about you. This is your time to contribute to that, to learn literature, to contribute to it, to learn how to be a mathematics education researcher. And I’ve got your back.
New Speaker:
You know, something very relevant. So this past week I had a meeting with one of my mentees, Olivia, and she’s a math major over at Western Washington University. So she had this assignment that I gave her to read through one of the articles by Dr. Nicole Joseph a real dope scholar out at Vanderbilt does work on Black girl wood, but Olivia had read her article entitled Black women’s and girl’s persistence in the P-20 mathematics pipeline, two decades of children, youth, and adult education research. So as Olivia was reading this article, she found this perfect quote out of it, which is very relevant to what Brea was saying. It read, “Black women at the graduate level benefit from the mentorship of Black women faculty who often provide instrumental and psycho social support.” Personally, Black women have guided me my entire life, Noelle and I’m sure you can say the same thing. When I think about all the women that I grew up with here in Atlanta and in Seattle for my mom, my aunt, my godmom’s were all very involved. And even my mentors like LaDawn Blackett Jones, Tianna Hawkins, Amber Willis, Black women around me and supporting, even if they weren’t in mathematics at all, it is how much that really means for my own success. Noelle, what has your experience been like with Black women and mentors?
Noelle:
If we’re talking about pre-college, like Black women mentors. I had a ton of them because I’m from the Bahamas there was no shortage. And like I mentioned, I’ve got a lot of teachers in my family. Like my mom was a teacher, one of my grandmothers and even more, like, along that line. So there was no shortage, but in college I can name exactly one, uh, Ja’Wanda Grant who was the head of the Quantitative Teasoning center at the time, not in either department I was doing a major in, but she was the Black woman mentor available to me. And when I got to grad school there weren’t Black women. Like I was the Black woman and it wasn’t until a year ago that I even found Black women in math to be friends and mentors. Like some of them are on the Black and Math team. I’ve got Candice and Marissa, for sure. And Michole, we didn’t even meet until 2018.
Michole:
Yeah and we’ve been in the same field all these years before then, just now meeting, but it also leaves me wondering what other Black women out there, who I have not had the opportunity to engage with and meet specifically in mathematics because we are such a small population as is. So I am again, very happy that we’re going to Black and Math week, cause there’s already a larger community just boiling around right now. You know, uh, so far through this podcast with Black and Math week, we’ve talked a lot about the barriers that we’ve seen come in place for Black students in mathematics at all ages. We’ve talked about the way that our bodies may have been policed in the math classroom, especially when you think about the way that we’re assessing how Black students have math knowledge and abilities, but how important it is for us to also have this mentorship and mentorship specifically from people of the same race or same background that we can identify and relate to in different ways, how important that is. And we didn’t mention any of José’s mentors but know if you’ve been a mentor to José, if he sees you and loves you, and we love you for loving him. Now, we’re going to play a game that Noelle and I came up with that was a lot of fun to do with our guests on the podcast. And it’s called the counter narrative game. So I’m going to well me and Noella are going to present different counter narratives our guests about Black students and mathematics. And to be very clear, we both believe these statements are very false, but we wanted to hear what our guests would give as a counter narrative to show how false these statements are. Think of it like a proof by contradiction.
Brea:
Yeah. The way I actually presented this to Brea was how would you respond if someone stood up and asked you this question when you’re on a panel or at a workshop or something, and the first statement to counter is someone describing Black students in math as being at risk?
Brea:
Well, my first question would be at risk for what.
Noelle:
You know, at risk. Wink (laughter)
Brea:
The only thing that I think Black students are at risk of is being treated as if they don’t belong in this space. I think they’re at risk of losing their confidence and at risk of not being seen for all of the brilliance that they bring to our institution, because some people have negative beliefs about who they are. So I would recommend that we really confront our own thinking about what it means to, to be at risk first and then think about how we can support our Black students.
Noelle:
Right? Why would we be talking about being at risk and not talking about how to fix it?
José:
Why, why is education so risky? Like who put the risk? Like who created the gap? There’s a, there was a recent study that showed that like, if this country actually decided to invest in reparations, when it was supposed to, then that gap would have been closed already. So anything, when you tell people that folks are at risk, you’re basically saying that not only did you destroy the safety net, that’s supposed to catch them in the ways that that say our white wealthy counterparts have. You’re also saying that you’re not going to fortify the rope by which they are hanging. And I do mean that in any number of ways, right? So. (laughter)
Michole:
I hear you.
José:
It’s, it’s not only is it unfair, it is systemically oppressive for anyone to say that these kids are at risk. Like that, yhat just means that our country and our systems have done an awful job, um, and probably intentionally to make sure that they were at risk.
Michole:
Right and if we’re not at risk, we’re exceptional. Right.
Noelle:
And there we are having to defend ourselves because we’re good at something. And that’s something else we actually brought up in this counter narrative game again.
Michole:
Yeah. So our next statement for our guests was when Black students are doing well, they aren’t exceptional in math, like a unicorn. I mean, yes, we’re magical, but (laughter).
Noelle:
That’s such harmful thinking. Brea actually came in with some fire for her response.
Brea:
I’ll be honest. My initial response is I want to be, I want to say how offended I am that you would believe that about Black children.
Michole:
Girl.
Noelle:
Yeah.
Michole:
Girl. (laughter).
Noelle:
Girl
Speaker 2:
Because what we need to do and understand is that being a mathematician and being someone who is successful in mathematics, it’s, there’s no, there’s no one way to learn how to do that. There’s no one way to succeed in doing so. People aren’t born as exceptional mathematicians. We’re supposed to know and believe that. And so if I’m providing students with, or if I’m helping students understand mathematics using a variety of methods and doing so when they’re proving success, then why would we not use that with more of our students? Why would we not encourage more students to become successful in mathematics, by broadening the way that we teach or broadening the way that they experienced mathematics? So instead of saying that, looking at this data and saying that these students are exceptional because of this particular methodology or this particular, um, because they, they just had something, I guess, that, that other students didn’t it. Why would we not make that available to all students?
Michole:
You know, that’s just like what you were saying earlier, Noelle , about students of, we know they’re at risk and we have ways to fix it. Why aren’t we just fixing it? If some style of teaching is working to make those Black students perform exceptionally why no just try it with more students.
Noelle:
I mean, there’s probably something a little bit, uh, political behind this, Michole, right? Because teaching Black students, as we know, is political. Some people might not think so, which is why it’s the next statement in our counter narrative game? Like, what do you say if someone says to you math is not political.
José:
Let me get in my bag, I want to focus on the Black experience here, but it applies to all, this is a country in which it was illegal for enslaved people to read and write and do math. So if that is true, which it is, then inherently, that means education is political.
Noelle:
Okay. I can tell Jose is about to go in on this.
José:
Our so-called founding fathers, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, while they stood on different sides of the political spectrum, both believed in a public education. But we also recognize that the vast majority of founding fathers were also slave owners. So if this is also true, which it is, that means that this country was founded on the idea that yes, education should be given to everybody, but that if you believe that Black people are human beings, which they are, b ut to them not so. You know, this country is already telling people that there’s a set of people who do not deserve education. And so that is a political statement. And so at any given moment, when you want to teach Black kids to do math, you are doing a political thing because you are going against the narratives that have been the bedrock of this country.
Michole:
Whew, man speak on it. Who’s country? He is making some points and I know he’s got to keep going
José:
As a teacher because of the beliefs of the founding fathers, because of everything that happened since then, including reconstruction, civil rights movement. And by the way, not just in the fifties and sixties, I mean like the entire thing from 19 hundreds, all the way on up. So maybe even the 1970s with the Black power movement, the idea that you, as an educator can go into a classroom that is state sponsored, where you get your state licensure, and you are given a set of standards that was approved by the state means that you are agents of that state. And so you go into a state sponsored building as a state sponsored agent with state sponsored standards with state sponsored textbooks. That means that you are a political agent. It doesn’t mean that you are a partisan mind you. You could be, and God forbid, you could be a Trump loving Republican who goes into inner city schools and believe yourself to be somebody who’s trying to do good for Black and Brown kids. Fine. But that is still political. Like you could be a political atheist. You could be somebody who libertarian, who doesn’t believe in any of the spectrum. You could. All that. But the minute you sign that contract and you start collecting money from the state, right, to teach kids that makes you political. And even if you are in a private school, that means that that private school is on public land, which was given to make sure that that school was built, and you still have to go through any number of licensures to become a private school, public school, charter school, whatever, right. That that’s a state thing, that is a political statement. Like even just wanting kids to learn, whoever it is, ends up being political, but even more so for Black kids because Black kids weren’t allowed to do so they weren’t allowed to learn as a state law. So that’s what I would have to say to that.
Noelle:
Imagine thinking any kind of education isn’t political, when discussions about whether or not Black people are people aren’t even that far in the past. I mean, imagine.
Michole:
And this history really keeps coming back to haunt us at this point.
Brea:
Here we are, again, when we look at particularly the schooling of, of Black children and mathematics in particular, I know that for us, with desegregation, a lot of things changed. A lot of things actually became worse for Black children because when we were often in our own schools, there was just a lot of there’s always academic excellence and, and support. And, um, I was reading someone’s work who talked about how there were, there was evidence that we, we already been doing at the high school level algebra, geometry, and, and studying other things that many white communities had not been doing. And so then when we desegregated, it was amazing that while we actually were advanced in mathematics, the perceptions and that bias about what Black students could do, they still started to put us off in, in other courses and in lower level classes. And so we are essentially, we’re seeing the fruit of a lot of political decisions. Oh, if mathematics isn’t political, for any other reason, we’re seeing the fruit of political decisions from the last 60, well last 400 years if we want to be honest. (laughter)
Michole:
So I want to do a quick shout out about EduColor, which is an organization founded by José Vilson. So EduColor mobilizes advocates nationwide around issues of educational equity, agency, and justice. They amplify the works and ideas of students, educators, and communities of color through supportive on and offline networks and professional development.
José:
So what we found with EduColor is like, we not only have to think about the policy side and not only the pedagogy side, but then how those two come together in order to create a more human experience for so many of our children, because so many of our school systems are doubling down on the idea that our Black kids don’t deserve, for example, to have a full set of, of learnings. That they don’t deserve art, they don’t deserve music, they don’t deserve dance. And then when they do, they only deserve the types of things that, you know, will allow them into like the, the, the white hemisphere. Right. So, Oh yeah. We’re going to make sure that these kids get this sort of learning, but this learning that they’re doing already in the streets that they’re doing at their own homes. It’s not that valid because it’s not going to get them into the white spaces. It’s not going to bolster their resumes. It’s not going to do all the things that like are white validating or whatever have you. So we have a whole 12 of schooling that consistently reinforces white norms on Black kids, instead of trying to find ways to get, uh, Black learning into, into the spaces and making sure that their learnings come into the things that we’re trying to do as adults. So it’s a whole reframing and EduColor hopes to be in the forefront of making sure that happens.
Noelle:
You know, he’s bringing up a great point about de-centering whiteness in our education. What would it be like to just talk about what kind of math education would be great for us by us? FUBU! (laughter)
Michole:
Well, I’m happy to tell you Noelle there is a genre that already exists for that known as Afrofuturism Afrofuturism is where we can look at our historical realities as Black people, and imagine where we can go based on our strengths and not just the negative parts of the injustice that have been done to us in America and beyond, but to say, “Hey, we can actually do way more than what the history books have tried to describe our lives.”
Noelle:
So I last question for José and Brea was, imagine you’re writing your own, Afrofuturist stories. And it’s that 50 years from today, 2070. And it’s about a Black main character. What does their perfect math experience look likein your story? Considering everything that’s going on right now, even with COVID and virtual education 50 years from now, what would be the best situation for a Black student in math?
Brea:
I think one of the first things is a shift in the focus that we have on, on testing in schools. I think the testing focus has really driven, um, which is a big policy, has driven a lot of, of how classrooms are structured and how students are move through mathematics and how teachers teach mathematics. So I think the individualized learning for mathematics well, for most subjects but particularly for mathematics is really, it can be liberating for a lot of students. And that’s not something that’s really widely acceptable. You could be using technology to do that right now, but I think in the next 50 years, if we could figure out how to just stop teaching to a whole groups of students and start looking at students as individuals, I think that’s one way to rehumanize mathematics. A lot of people are able to identify patterns that exist in this world and are willing to explore and investigate. And if we could nurture more of that through mathematics consistently through K-12 and, and the college level, then yeah, you’d see more little girls, more little Brea Noelles that just, just gravitate towards it. And don’t see it just as a means to an end or something that they need in to get into college or get into grad school or to get into a particular career. So I think if, if we can, yeah, we, we have to, we have to liberate mathematics. We have to liberate mathematics. And I, I want to say that there’s the people who are doing good work in those areas already. It’s just not widespread or as widespread as it needs to be. And I think that, that the policies, the testing in particular is probably one of the greatest hindrances towards that. I know that there are teachers who really do believe in children, and there are people that are, are doing some, some good things, but they often feel hindered by many of the things that they are required to do. And if some of those barriers didn’t exist, then I think we’d see some more inventive mathematics.
Michole:
And a lot of this inventive mathematics that Brea is referring to and imagining I’m sure has also already happened. What then a lot of the math in African culture and broader Black culture that we may just not have any access to. And imagine if we could tap into those, to all of those, like wells of knowledge in mathematics, and what’s, it’s taken into our futures.
Noelle:
I mean, Black and Brown people I’ve been doing math fo, forr forever, right? I just, I feel like we could run a whole class on math that white people.
Michole:
Girl, a whole university. Well, we could also have a whole university about all the mathematics that we could learn from other cultures, especially from the continent of Africa and all the countries that are on that land. And José actually has a lot more, he can say on that.
José:
There is a whole continent of Africa that had already conceptualized things around calendars and angles and structures and geometries that, you know, a lot of folks did not appreciate. And so in, in my mind it would be no longer dangerous to say things like my people had a way of doing this that was more efficient and more responsive to their environment. So thinking about how so many libraries and so many structures have been burned down, right? Like that’s, like that’s what you’re kind of like, you know, highlighting for me is that we, we have to reckon with that which already happened. Right. And then starting from this point on, I would love, for example, for Black, Black students specifically to say, you know, like we’re gonna work with this two plus two equals four. We can try to agree on that. But then where that takes me in my journey towards fulfillment doesn’t necessarily have to be the same thing that you want to do, but it does have to be responsive to the things that I want to reach and how I want to reach them. That’s the different praxis, just straight up then what we have now. And then that teachers would ultimately be able to learn how to play with the power dynamics that are often in the classroom highlighting folks like Paulo Freire, which by the way, like, it’s love the work. It’s not new work. Like every, teacher’s a student, every student a teacher, there’s always a thing that we can learn back and forth, right? Like the Bible teaches you that, doesn’t it.
Michole:
And that is all the time we have for this episode of Relatively Prime. We need to thank José and Brea for speaking with us and the National Math Festival for sponsoring this episode. This takeover, a Relatively Prime is a part of Black and Math Week. You can find this and updates on Twitter @BlackInMath. We would also like to thank Krishmusic for the use of their music. In this episode, you can find them on SoundCloud or in the show notes at RelPrime dot com.
Noelle:
We also really need to thank Relatively Prime’s patrons on Patreon without y’all the show would not exist. If you want to and are able to contribute, you can head over to patreon.com/relprime to pledge a little bit for episode. Though, if you are not able to, that is totally fine. Just listening is more than enough.
Michole:
If you want to learn more about the intersection of Afrofuturism and mathematics education, check out SpaceBox from Stimulation Escape room. It’s an immersive escape room experience where you have to help six Black astronauts who have fallen ill in space. You can learn more as stimulationescaperoom.org.
Noelle:
Finally Relatively Prime is licensed under Creative Commons, attribution share alike license. So if you decide to reuse it, you have to license it in the same way. Otherwise have some fun. Thank you all so much for listening and as always, and please know Samuel is making us say this have a matherrific month y’all. (Laughter).
Michole:
Matherrific.
Noelle:
Matherrific
Michole:
This is a matherrific time.
Samuel:
All of that is staying in. All of it.
Michole:
Perfect.
Noelle:
Yes.
Black Girl Mathgic
Nov 01, 2020
On this episode of Relatively Prime Samuel is joined by Brittany Rhodes the creator of the amazing monthly mathematics subscription box Black Girl Mathgic. They discuss where the idea of the box came from, what comes in the boxes each month, and why everyone benefits when young Black women are centered in mathematics. If you want to help Brittany and Black Girl Mathgic reach more people you can help out by donating a box.
[The podcast episode file has been update to remove repeated narration segments]
The Somervilles
Mar 31, 2020
On this episode of Relatively Prime Samuel is joined by Brigitte Stenhouse of the Open University to talk about the life and times of Mary, and William, Somerville.
3 Scenes from the Life of Benjamin Banneker
Feb 29, 2020
On this month’s Relatively Prime Samuel shares three scenes from the life of Benjamin Banneker. One about a clock, one about a solar eclipse projectsion, and one about a puzzle. You can learn more about the life of Benjamin Banneker by checking out the book The Life of Benjamin Banneker by Silvio Bendini which was essential in the production of this episode and it is available to borrow for free on the Internet Archive or if you prefer a physical copy your library may have it on hand and if they do not the amazing system that is Interlibrary Loan should be able to provide for you.
It was only the second timepiece he had ever seen. And, to those of us alive today, the first we would have thought of as such, as this was a pocket watch and the other a simple sundial.
That Benjamin Banneker had never seen a watch before is not that surprising. After all he was a teenaged free African American man in the colony of Maryland in either the late 1740s or early 1750s. While there were a number of clockmakers who provided their works to farmers in the Chesapeake region, it will likely not come as a surprise that a family where the father is a freed slave and the mother the daughter of a freed slave and a formerly indentured servant were not among those clockmakers clients, though the family’s tobacco farm did allow them to be self-sufficient. The most likely thing is that Benjamin found a merchant or a traveler who not only owned a pocket watch but was willing to let a precocious free young black man take a good long look at it.
There is no historical evidence of what exactly Benjamin did when he set his eyes upon the second timepiece he had ever seen but we can make some educated guesses.
We can guess that he was able to get a good look at workings within. We can guess that he felt fascinated by these workings. We can guess his mind raced trying to understand how such workings were able to keep time so well that they could be relied upon. We can guess he wanted a clock of his own.
We can make those guesses because of what we know.
We know that after seeing the pocket watch Benjamin began to draw out the internal workings of gears and wheels and springs. We know he then worked on calculating the sizes and ratios needed to make a clock function correctly. And we know he used those drawings and calculations to make a clock all his own.
Fashioned primarily out of wood he carved himself, up to and including the gears, the clock Benjamin Banneker designed and built at 21 worked until he died at 74.
Scene 2: The Projection
More than 30 years of working the farm later Benjamin Banneker learns about, and quickly falls in love with, astronomy. At first it is only through occasional discussions with neighbor and noted amateur astronomer George Ellicott, likely with some nighttime telescopic adventures.
Never one to do things in half measure though, Benjamin wanted more. Which he got in 1788, when George offered to lend to him a telescope, some drafting instruments, and many astronomical texts. George also offered Benjamin lesson to help him through the texts and to learn to use the instruments. These lessons turned out to be unnecessary as Benjamin took to his Astronomical studies so vigorously that he worked through the texts before George to make his way back from an extended business trip.
Benjamin did not stop with going through some texts, no he moved right on to practical Astronomy. As well he should have considering it led him, a free African American man, in the newly minted state of Maryland to publish 6 Almanacs from 1792-1797 and to have a correspondence with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. But those happened later, and while impressive and great achievements there is a smaller one which tells us just as much about Benjamin Banneker.
Within the first year of receiving the texts and tools from George, Benjamin put to himself the task of making a projection of an eclipse of the sun. Using the tools at hand, his newly found knowledge and his skill at logarithmic calculation he completed his task which he eventually he sent it along to George Ellicott who was still away on business. George was understandably stunned that someone with whom he had left some books but not provided the lessons which should have been needed to understand them had produced such a work, so much so that the very small error in calculation the projection contained did nothing to lessen its sheen. Upon receiving George’s reply though Benjamin did not agree, he was distressed that he had made any error at all and endeavored to determine how such a thing could have happened. Which of course he did.
It turned out that Benjamin was using two books, one from James Fergusen and another from Charles Ledbetter, both of which had correct methods for projecting solar eclipses but which could lead to errors if they were used in conjunction with one another. Suffice it to say Benjamin did not make further errors in projecting solar eclipses.
Scene 3: Puzzle of the Dog and the Hare from from George Hopkins recorded, and solved, by Benjamin Banneker
When fleecy skies have Cloth’d the ground With a white mantle all around Then with a grey hound Snowy fair In milk white fields we Cours’d a Hare Just in the midst of a Champaign We set her up, away she ran, The Hound I think was from her then Just thirty leaps or three times ten Oh it was pleasant for to see How the Hare did run so timorously But yet so very Swift that I Did think she did not run but Fly When the Dog was almost at her heels She quickly turn’d and down the fields She ran again with full Career And ‘gain she turn’d and the place she were At every turn she gain’d of ground As many yards as the greyhound Could leap at thrice, and She did make, Just six, if I do not mistake Four times She Leap’d for the Dogs three But two of the Dogs leaps did agree With three of hers, nor pray declare How many leaps he too to Catch the hare
Just Seventy two I did Suppose, An Answer false from thence arose, I doubled the Sum of Seventy two, But still I found that would not do, I mix’d the Numbers of them both, Which Shew’d so plain that I’ll make Oath, Eight hundred leaps the Dog did make, And Sixty four, the Hare to take
That is all the time we have for this episode of Relatively Prime. If you want to learn more about the life of Benjamin Banneker may I suggest Silvio Bendini’s The life of Benjamin Banneker which is available to borrow on the Internet Archive or you can check your local public library and if they do not have it on hand may I suggest the amazing system that is Interlibrary loan. The music on this episode is from Chris Zabriske, Rodrigo Gonzalez, Griffin Lundin, Dirty Porcelain you can find links to their work in the show notes for this episode on RelPrime.com Also I want to be sure to thank all my patrons on Patreon. Without y’ll this episode and the lat 40 or so could not have happened so thank you. If you want to support the show like they do you can head over to patreon.com/relprime and pledge whatever you can afford per episode.
Finally RelPrime is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution share-alike license so you can feel free to do whatever you want with the sounds on this episode as long as you say you got it from Relatively Prime and that you license it in the same way
Thank you all for listening and like the month before last and the month after this one I hope you have a matheriffic month. By y’all.
Truthiness
Feb 15, 2020
In this live episode recorded at the 2020 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Denver Samuel Hansen talks about the truth behind the stories we all tell in mathematics. In order to do this they will investigate the actual facts of the Galois narrative, have a conversation about where and when the decimal point appeared with Glen Van Brummelen of Quest University, and play a game of 2 lies and a truth with some people in the audience.
2 Lies and a Truth Slide
The podcast was recorded live on the occupied land of the Arapaho and Cheyenne Nations. Taken finally through violence in the Sand Creek Massacre. Colorado is also the current headquarters of the Southern Ute and Mountain Ute Tribes. There was also parts recorded on the occupied lands of the Anishinaabeg (including Odawa, Ojibwe, and Boodewadomi) and Wyandot tribes.
For this episode of Relatively Prime Samuel decided that instead of speaking to a guest they would instead talk about the research they are conducting now that they are a Mathematics & Statistics Librarian. This research looks into how the citations of mathematical publications age over time, and its discussion includes a first for Relatively Prime – Data Sonification! These sonifications were created using Jonathon Middleton’s website Musical Algorithms (you hear more about Jonathan and this site on the Relatively Prime Season 1 episode The Score)
On this month’s episode of Relatively Prime Samuel Hansen speaks with Professor Mike Spivey from University of Puget Sound about his interactive fiction game A Beauty Cold and Austere. They discuss how interactive fiction and mathematics work together, some of the mathematical puzzles in the game, and just what easter eggs might be hiding within the game.
A Beauty Cold and Austere Voiceover: Bree Prehn KT Howard
Robert Schneider
Jul 31, 2019
This episode is a bit of a blast from the past. Samuel has recently been going back through some of the old episodes from season 1 and while there were listening to The Score they realized that while the story about Robert Schneider and the non-Pythagorean scale was great it barely scratched the surface of amazing things Robert talked about in the interview. Upon registering to the original conversation, 7 years after it was recorded, Samuel realized not only did the story barely scratch the surface, the rest of the interview was absolutely fascinating. Robert’s mind works in amazing ways and the connections it draws between mathematics and music and art and life need to be heard. There is a reason Samuel considers Robert to be one of their favorite people in the world to talk to. So, sit back, listen, and enjoy Robert Schneider from Apples in Stereo, The Elephant 6 Record Co., and freshly minted mathematics PhD (a degree which had just been begun when this interview was conducted).
On this episode of Relatively Prime Samuel Hansen is joined by fellow podcasters and friends Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett of the Aperiodical to talk about their new mathematical podcast Mathematical Objects. They discuss about where the idea for the podcast came from, how talking about objects can lead to conversations which range from research mathematics to history and back again, and it even features two episodes of their show, one about a shirt and other about a piece of citrus. Once you hear it you will want to subscribe, which you can do here.
On this episode of Relatively Prime Samuel speaks with the founders, Sylvia Bozeman of Spellman College and Rhonda Hughes of Bryn Mawr, a current director, Ami Randunskaya of Pomona College, and a former director, Ulrica Wilson of Morehouse College, of the Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) program. They discuss why EDGE was started, how it transformed from a program to help young women entering graduate school into a multi-academic generation mentoring community, and its impact on mathematics. If you want to support the amazing work EDGE does you can donate here.
If a person is going to become a mathematician it is important for them to be able to see examples of people like themselves who have already made that journey. All too often this type of representation is few and far between for many mathematically inclined black and brown young people. On this episode of Relative Prime Samuel Hansen is joined by the four co-creators of Mathematically Gifted & Black: Candice Price, Erica Graham, Raegan Higgins, and Shelby Wilson. Together they talk about why they wanted to tell the stories of a wide breadth of black mathematicians lives, the importance of representation, how some of the stories they are still having to tell in 2019 show how much mathematics has to grow, and potentials paths for that growth.
Here on Relatively Prime we have discussed mathematical novels and poetry and music and even featured mathematics sketches, but we have yet to talk movies. That oversight is going to rectified on this episode by featuring two interviews Samuel had done with people who have made movies where mathematics is the star.
First up is Samuel’s conversation with the creators of the Flatland and Flatland² Sphereland animated movies writer and director Dano Johnson and the producer Seth Caplan
Then you will here Samuel’s interview of Christopher Boone, the creator of the Kickstarter funded mathematics movie Cents. Quick disclaimer, Samuel was one of the funders of the Kickstarter.
On Relatively Prime we talk a lot about mathematicians and their research, but it has been a long time since we have talked about an absolutely integral part of how people end up becoming mathematicians and doing research…Math Teachers. After all if there were no math teachers then who would first tempt us into the world of mathematics with wondrous things like factoring, which is totally what got Samuel hooked. Hey don’t look at them that way, they just love a good difference of two squares quadratic.
On this episode of Relatively Prime Samuel speaks with mathematics teacher Jo Morgan. They discuss how Jo went from banking to teaching, how twitter totally changed Jo’s teaching practice, and the work Jo does helping teacher to find resources to use in their teaching. To learn more about Jo follow her on twitter and check out her blog Resourceaholic.com.
Samuel has been in the middle of a big move this month, more on this in upcoming episodes, but they did not want you to be without a mathematical podcast to end the old and start the new year so here is a year in review episode (with a special twist)x from Samuel and Peter Rowlett’sold podcast Math/Maths.
In a traditional move for the start of January we attempt a review of the year. In an untraditional move, we choose the year 1811. Samuel and Peter weren’t able to speak directly because of the ongoing tension following American independence and the brewing Anglo-American war of 1812, but they cover some mathematical hot topics and the work of several contemporary mathematicians, including Carl Friedrich Gauss, Joseph Fourier, Mary Sommerville, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Siméon Denis Poisson and Marie-Sophie Germain, plus the tale of a mathematician born this year: Évariste Galois.
Cycle of Mathematics: Around 20 Papers
Nov 30, 2018
Welcome to the fourth and final episode of the Cycle of Mathematics mini-series from Relatively Prime. In this mini-series we are covering mathematics from its start as an idea to its publication to it inspiring the cycle to start anew.
In this this episode we arrive at the inspiration step of the cycle. Specifically we hear from Michelle Girvan from the University of Maryland on how the Watt-Strogatz paper on small world networks discussed in the first episode of this mini-series helped motivate a definitely not insignificant amount of Michelle’s research.
Stayed tuned for to this feed for a special bonus live mathematics podcast recorded at MathsJam 2018 which will be dropping in a couple of weeks. It is a weird one and I think y’all will enjoy it.
Cycle of Mathematics: Orange Volumes on a Shelf (On the Internet)
Oct 31, 2018
Welcome to the third episode of the Cycle of Mathematics mini-series from Relatively Prime. In this mini-series we are covering mathematics from its start as an idea to its publication to it inspiring the cycle to start anew.
In this this episode we bring to you a tour of where mathematics articles go after they are published so that they may be found, Mathematical Reviews/MathSciNet. Samuel is shown the path a paper follows through the Mathematical Reviews by Managing Editor Norm Richert, with stops to talk to many department heads along the way.
Stayed tuned for next month’s final entry in the Cycle of Mathematics mini-series which will feature mathematics which was directly inspired by the work featured in the first episode of the mini-series.
Cycle of Mathematics: Verify, Revise, Repeat
Oct 01, 2018
Welcome to the second episode of the Cycle of Mathematics mini-series from Relatively Prime. In this mini-series we are covering mathematics from its start as an idea to its publication to it inspiring the cycle to start anew.
In this this episode we bring to you the story of the hidden labor of mathematical research, that of the editors and the peer review referees. In order to do this Samuel spoke with Rachel Kuske, then of the University of British Columbia and now the Chair of Mathematics at Georgia Tech, and W. Ted Mahavier of Lamar University. They spoke about how an editor manages a peer review process, the three things a peer review referee needs to check, and why there is so little time for peer reviewing.
Stayed tuned for next month’s entry in the Cycle of Mathematics mini-series which will feature a behind the scenes tour of one of the most important buildings in mathematics.
And as a special bonus here are the peer review notes Duncan mentioned in the last episode.
Cycle of Mathematics: The Six Handshakes
Aug 31, 2018
Welcome to the new Cycle of Mathematics mini-series from Relatively Prime. In this mini-series we will be covering mathematics from its start as an idea to its publication to it inspiring the cycle to start anew.
In this first episode we bring to you the story of the ground breaking small-world network research of Duncan Watts and Steven Strogatz which spawned the mathematical discipline of network theory. This work was published in Nature in 1998 in a paper title Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks. In order to tell this tale Samuel spoke with Duncan themself to get the inside story on where the idea came from, the process of the research, and why Duncan had to bring extra calling cards on a trip to Catalonia.
Stayed tuned for next month’s entry in the Cycle of Mathematics mini-series which will be all about the behind the scenes of mathematical publication.
As this is being written there is around 18 hours left in the final match of the Aperiodical’s Big Internet Math Off between Matt Parker and Dr. Nira Chamberlin. In honor of the final Samuel got on the phone and talked with the creator of the Math Off Christian Lawson-Perfect about where the idea came from and what it has been like to run. Samuel also got a hold of Dr. Nira Chamberlin who was kind enough to take carve out some time from a busy schedule at a new job to take a call from Samuel to discuss what it has been like to take part and make it to the final of the Math Off.
UPDATE!
After the episode originally went out Samuel was able to get in touch with Matt Parker for a discussion of Matt’s unique strategy in the competition and why breaking voting systems can be fun.
Sadly Samuel did not make it to the final round of The Aperiodical’s Big Internet Math Off, but lucky for y’all in a fit of profound arrogance, as well as trying to deal with some potential scheduling issues which could have accompanied victory, they had already made all of their entries. Instead of letting them languish in the dust bin of mathematical communication history Samuel has decided to release them anyway.
This would-be final entry is all about checkers, well checkers and AI and hubris and death and rivalry and the devil’s work. In fact this is really a re-airing of the Series 1 episode Chinook which Samuel will happily tell you is the greatest story they have ever had the story to tell.
Here is the description from the originally episode’s post:
You may not think of checkers as an important game intellectually. It certainly has never had the cachet of chess. That did not stop it from becoming the obsession of the University of Alberta computer science professor for nearly two decades and the center of one of the most ambitious Artificial Intelligence projects ever undertaken. This is their story.
Jonathan Schaeffer is a Computer Science Professor at the University of Alberta where he is also the current Dean of the Faculty of Science.
Chinook is the greatest checkers player in the world, in fact it is impossible to beat. The product of an 18 year project in computer artificial intelligence, Chinook represents one of the greatest breakthroughs in computer game playing and was the first machine to ever hold a human world championship.
Sadly Samuel did not make it to the semi-final round of The Aperiodical’s Big Internet Math Off, but lucky for y’all in a fit of profound arrogance, as well as trying to deal with some potential scheduling issues which could have accompanied victory, they had already made all of their entries. Instead of letting them languish in the dust bin of mathematical communication history Samuel has decided to release them anyway.
This would-be semi-final entry is all about Gerrymandering. It features interviews taken from two different episodes, Mathematistan from the second season and Re District from the third. Check out those episodes to find out more about the guests and their work.
Sadly Samuel did not make it to the second round of The Aperiodical’s Big Internet Math Off, but lucky for y’all in a fit of profound arrogance, as well as trying to deal with some potential scheduling issues which could have accompanied victory, they had already made all of their entries. Instead of letting them languish in the dust bin of mathematical communication history Samuel has decided to release them anyway.
In the first round Samuel is facing off against Paul Taylor, and they need y’all’s help to win. Head over to the match page and vote for Samuel so they can tell y’all about what an Irish bridge, graffiti, and the letters i, j, and k have to do with getting to the moon in the second round.
For their first round entry Samuel shares with you the story of why your, well not you wise, beautiful listener but definitely for everyone you know, their friends have more friends than they do and how this paradox can help fight epidemics. If after listening you want to find out more about why your friends have more friends than you do you can read Scott’s paper and check out Nicholas’s work or you can listen below to the season one RelPrime episode a longer version of this story was in. Samuel also wrote an expository piece about the friendship paradox for Second-Rate minds you might want to check out.
On this month’s episode of Relatively Prime we are excited to bring to you the story of Girls Talk Math. Girls Talk Math is a 2 week mathematics camp for high school women, as well as a podcast made by the campers about women from the history of mathematics. Samuel spoke with the founders Francesca Bernardi and Katrina Morgan about where the idea came from, why they decided to include podcasting as part of the camp, and the ways they reached out beyond the typical women you would expect to want to attend a summer mathematics camp. You can see how you can get involved here.
This month’s Relatively Prime is all about classification. Samuel is joined by Fabian Müller of zbMath for a discussion of the Mathematics Subject Classification, the benefit of using a hierarchical scheme to organize mathematics, and the work Fabian is doing to help revise MSC as a part of MSC 2020. This is a really important work which effects your ability to search and find the mathematical work you are need, so please think about taking part.
In this chapter of Diegetic Plots on Relatively Prime Larry Lesser shares the poem “The M Word” and there is a very unfortunate customer service call at Kroneckea.
Many thanks must go to Bree Prehn for no particular reason for this episode.
On this episode so Relatively Prime Samuel talks with former office mate at UNLV Cody Palmer. When this conversation was recorded Cody was a PhD student at the University of Montana and has since moved on to become a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at the Institute for Disease Modeling. Samuel and Cody talk about the research Cody did into Tick-Borne Relapsing Fever and how the number of relapses effect its dynamics, plus some advice on burger toppings and the worst(or the best) research strategy to use when studying an infectious disease spread by biting insects.
Samuel has been feeling a bit nostalgic recently and was thinking about an old show we can almost guarantee you have never heard of, called Science Sparring Society. It was all based around this idea that from a Frank Swain tweet to make a podcast that told the stories of fights from the history of science. It was so much fun making this show, and Samuel was always sad that more people did not get the chance to hear it. Which is exactly why this episode features the two mathematical fights from the 2012 podcast Science Sparring Society. Thankfully the topics were history already when the show first came out.
Episode 1: The first fight to be featured in the Science Sparring Society is between the two biggest intellectual heavyweights of the late 17th Century, Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz. Their battle over the Calculus was so epic they call it a war!
Episode 7: For the seventh bout we bring to you the fight of infinity. Pitting two of the greatest mathematical minds of their generation against one another, the fight over infinity changed the face of mathematics itself. In the corner of multiple infinities was Georg Cantor and fight for the finite was Leopold Kronecker. You will have to listen to find out who won, and who hits below the belt.
We are happy to bring to you a special holiday episode of Relatively Prime during this festive period. Samuel is joined by old pals Katie, Peter, and Christian from the Aperiodical for an often funny, sometimes serious, and always entertaining conversation about the phenomenon of formulas for “The Perfect X” which are often seen in newspapers, especially around the holidays. Some of the examples discussed were the perfect Christmas song, perfect Christmas tree, perfect penalty kick, perfect scone cream ratio, perfect Christmas day, and here are plenty of other ones too that the Aperiodical has gathered. Happy Holidays!!!
It is that time of year where you, and everyone else, is coughing and sniffling and sneezing and generally getting gross germs all over the place. That is why for this episode of Relatively Prime Samuel Hansen speaks with Benjamin Morin about infectious disease modeling and the best mitigation strategies those models indicate to deal with disease while minimizing cost, both for individuals and for societies. Fair warning, those best strategies may be depressing and definitely not what Samuel was hoping for.
Don’t forget to support Relatively Prime on Patreon and make sure Samuel can afford to make rent next month.
Sure DNA is important, some might even claim it is absolutely integral to life itself, but does it contain any interesting math? Samuel is joined by UC-Davis Professor of Mathematics, Microbiology, and Molecular Genetics Mariel Vazquez for a discussion proves conclusively that mathematically DNA is fascinating. They talk about the topology of DNA, how knot theory can help us understand the problems which occur during DNA replication, and how some antibiotics are really pills of weaponized mathematics.
Don’t forget to support Relatively Prime on Patreon and make sure Samuel can afford to make rent next month.
Have you ever wondered what mathematicans’ favorite theorems were? How about what food or music pairs perfectly with those theorems? Well whether your answer to those questions was yes or no or what are you talking about there is a new mathematics podcast on the scene you need to check out called My Favorite Theorem.
My Favorite Theorem is the brain child of Kevin Knudson and Evelyn Lamb. You may recognize those names as a writer who contributes to The Conversation, Forbes, and is a mathematics professor at the University of Florida and as freelance mathematics journalist who runs the Scientific American blog Roots of Unity. They were kind enough to talk to me early in the morning about where the idea for the show came from, why the pairings are so cool, and how mathematical audio can help humanize mathematicians. Oh, and I make them come up with a pairing for our conversation. Plus, as a super special bonus they were kind enough to let me share episode 3 of My Favorite Theorem with Emille Davie Lawrence as part of the episode. I know you will soon have another podcast added to you subscription list.
Don’t forget to support Relatively Prime on Patreon and make sure Samuel can afford to make rent next month.
Mathematics has been showing up in the news a lot more than usual lately. It has shown up in Slate, The New York Times, and The New Yorker and each time it has been accompanied by one other word, gerrymandering. While Relatively Prime has covered gerrymandering once before in the season 2 episode Mathematistan(a story we just rereleased as an encore presentation in the feed so y’all can get a refresher on the mathematics of gerrymandering) so many important new things have been happening recently it seemed very important to talk about it again.
Samuel is then joined by Moon Duchin, a mathematics professor at Tufts University. Moon is the head of the new Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group. They are all about intersection of mathematics, technology, and redistricting. One of their big focuses is a series of conferences, the first one in Boston just recently took place, where they have a couple of days of public lectures and panels and then private workshops where they train PhDs to be expert redistricting witnesses and consultants, provide mathematical educators with tools to integrate gerrymandering into their curriculums, and hold a hackathon to develop tools for analyzing redistricting plans. Future conferences are coming up in WIsconsin, North Carolina, and Texas.
Don’t forget to support Relatively Prime on Patreon and make sure Samuel can afford to make rent next month.
Gerrymandering – the dividing of a state, county, etc., into election districts so as to give one political party a majority in many districts while concentrating the voting strength of the other party into as few districts as possible.
Few aspects of politics are as clearly open to mathematical analysis as gerrymandering. Just looking at district maps seems to scream for geometric analysis, and there really are a lot of different tests out there. Samuel spoke to David Austin about some potential gerrymandered districts and ways to test for them, then things got a bit bizarre. Samuel also sat down with Jonathan Hodge to talk about a technique Hodge helped develop to test for gerrymandering called the Convexity Coefficient.
Not all of the ways to test for possible gerrymandering rely on geometry. Duke University Professor Jonathan Mattingly and his former student Christy Vaughn, she is currently a graduate student at Princeton, decided to use probability theory to check to see if the districts used in North Carolina’s 2012 elections had been drawn fairly. The results were eye opening.
Don’t forget to support Relatively Prime on Patreon and make sure Samuel can afford to make rent next month.
On this episode of Relatively Prime is the other panel Samuel hosted at the 2017 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Atlanta. This panel was called Outside the Equation and focused on mathematical communication outside of the typical, i.e. writing and lecture. The panel consisted of three Relatively Prime guests you already know and love: Tim Chartier, the mathematical mime, Anna Haensch, the co-host of The Other Half podcast, and Robert Schneider, singer, songwriter, and guitarist behind Apples in Stereo. If you want to know how mathematical mime goes over at a Renaissance fair or how mathematicians react to an NPR piece on Poincare conjecture or hear a logarithmic scale as played on a marimba stop reading this and press play now.
If you want to hear a story featuring Samuel and an editor and number systems you must become a patron on Patreon and then you will get bonus audio for every episode, including the full audio of the Outside the Equations panel.
Many thanks to the MAA, AMS, and Atlanta for the JMM where this panel was taped and to all the math loving people who came out to see it in person.
Talking the Talk – Mathematics Communication
Jun 29, 2017
Mathematics is not always the easiest thing to talk or write about, especially when the audience is not other mathematicians. This doesn’t mean talking about math is impossible though, just that it takes some experience and maybe some tricks. Of course that leaves a very clear question: What are these tricks and how can I get this experience? In order to answer just this question Samuel gathered together mathematical communicators Dana Mackenzie, Beth Malmskog, and Colin Adams back in January 2017 at the Joint Mathematics Meetings for the panel “What We Talk About When We Talk About Mathematics”, and in this episode of Relatively Prime you will hear from the panel.
Don’t forget to support Relatively Prime on Patreon and make sure Samuel can afford to make rent next month. Plus, you can get access to the RelPrime bonus feed and hear the panel in its entirety.
There are stories all the time about race and policing in the United States. They do not typically focus on search rates of traffic stops, but that is a mistake we are not going to make.
On this episode of Relatively Prime Samuel talks to Lily Khadjavi of Loyola Marymount University about the relationship between race and searches during traffic stops in Los Angeles. It is not pretty, but it is fascinating and very important.
Don’t forget to support Relatively Prime on Patreon and make sure Samuel can afford to make rent next month. Plus, you can get access to the RelPrime bonus feed and hear Samuel’s full conversation with Lily, including the bit where Samuel talks about the time as a teenager he consented to a search.
Cancer is a truly terrible disease. We all know it too, in fact it is very likely not a person reading this right now who has not had their own lives or the lives of their nearest and dearest affected by it. This includes your host Samuel.
This is one reason Samuel was so interested in hearing to the two brilliant mathematicians you will be hearing from today talk about the work they have been doing using mathematics to better understand how to tackle this horrible disease.
First you will will hear Jennifer Chayes, Managing Director of Microsoft Research New England, talk about her work using Steiner Trees to help understand Gene Regulatory Networks as related to Glioblastoma and Breast Cancer.
Then the conversation shifts focus to the emerging field of immunotherapy cancer vaccines. To better understand how mathematics may help drive this treatment forward we are joined by Ami Radunskaya of Claremont College in Pomona. Ami discusses how modeling can help create better treatment protocols for these vaccines, and leaves us with a very important action item.
Don’t forget to support Relatively Prime on Patreon and make sure Samuel can afford to make rent next month. Plus, you can get access to the RelPrime bonus feed and hear the full interviews Samuel conducted with both Jennifer Chayes and Ami Radunskaya.
Sorry for the late episode this month, but your intrepid host and producer Samuel Hansen had to go and get himself concussed at his day job. This means he was not able to put together the episode he was planning on releasing, not to worry though he has some tricks up his sleeve. As you may know March 2017 is the month of #TryPod, where podcasts from all over are banding together to convince their listeners to help raise awareness of podcasts by suggesting podcasts to friends and family they may like. This meant that while Samuel was unable to put together a show himself this month he figured why not do a #TryPod for all his listeners and feature an episode of one of his favorite mathematical podcasts The Other Half(To be fully above board Samuel is the Executive Producer and Editor of The Other Half, but all of the genius of the show is fully down to the knowledge and skills and the two amazing hosts Anna Haensch and Annie Rorem).
After a conference Anna attended this summer, during which she and her colleagues considered whether they could legally protect the work they produced, we began to wonder: To what extent can math be considered—and protected as—intellectual property?
Already comfortable with mathematical logic and reasoning, we turned to Sarah Wasserman Rajec from William & Mary Law School to help us approach this topic using logic and reason from the legal standpoint. As we work out an answer in Math and Patent Law, we yuck it up about upstream innovation, a very important encryption algorithm, prime factorization, and whether math is created, invented or…just a matter of eyesight.
We live in a culture obsessed with the Origin Story, and not without reason. There is very rarely a story more fascinating than the one which tells us why it is people do what they do. So, for the first ever live episode of Relatively Prime we present to you the mathematical origin stories of Lily Khadjavi and Robert Schneider. The episode was recorded live at the 2017 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Atlanta, Georgia. Many thanks to the MAA and the AMS for putting on the meetings and giving us the opportunity to have a live show, as well as so much thanks to the wonderful crew at the Hilton for all their help pulling everything together.
Don’t forget to support Relatively Prime on Patreon and make sure Samuel can afford to make rent next month. Plus, you can get access to the RelPrime bonus feed and hear about the most amazing live composition Robert Schneider ever heard.
Download the Episode Subscribe: iTunes or RSS
We are right in the middle of that time every four years when the United States of America focuses very intently on the government, the whole government and not just the elected officials. Right now there are confirmation hearings happening, the executive branch is going through the final steps of transition, and a bunch of fresh congress people are settling into their new roles. This period is always a great reminder of all of the parts of the government which tend to be forgotten, like say the Department of the Interior. That is right, there really is a Department of the Interior. Since the USA’s focus is all on the government right now, so is Relatively Prime’s.
In particular we will be focusing on the role mathematics and mathematicians should play in our government. No matter what your personal political persuasion, if you are listening to this podcast it is a safe bet you wish mathematics had a place a little closer to the center of the political action. You are not alone, there are people working to make this happen. One such group are the AMS Congressional Fellows and this episode features an interview host Samuel Hansen conducted with the 2009-2010 AMS Congressional Fellow Katherine Crowley, actually she is not only a congressional fellow, she was also a AAAS policy fellow at the Department of Energy from 2011-2013. They discuss what Katherine’s fellowships entailed, how mathematics can help with policy, and how policy can help with mathematics. The interview was recorded in at the Seattle Joint Mathematics Meetings in January of 2016 where Katherine presented a talk about her time on the hill and in the executive branch. For anyone worried about being burnt out on political discussion after this last election season do not worry, this interview happened well before the election was in full swing and there is no talk about it at all.
Don’t forget to support Relatively Prime on Patreon and make sure Samuel can afford to make rent next month. Plus, you can get access to the RelPrime bonus feed and hear Katrine Crowley’s first mathematical memory.
Download the Episode Subscribe: iTunes or RSS
Welcome to the new season of Relatively Prime! There will be a few changes for the new season, primarily each episode will feature only a single story, but to make up for that episodes will be coming out monthly, starting with this one which features the story of how Sharif Ibrahim developed the lottery which was used to award licenses for the retail sale of cannabis in Washington State after the referendum legalizing it was passed in November, 2012.
You can support Relatively Prime by becoming a patron of the show on Patreon. Any support you can give the show is greatly appreciated, and goes a long way to making sure it is sustainable.
If you are going to be attending the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Atlanta(or just happen to live in the great city) next month you can not miss the LIVE recording of an episode of Relatively Prime. There are great guests lined up and you can be in the room while the magic is happening. All you have to do is show up at Regency Ballroom VII at the Hyatt on Friday January 6 at 8:00 PM.
This is the final episode of the 2nd season of Relatively Prime. It is also the second chapter of the ongoing series Diegetic Plots. Which means we will once again be exploring the intersection of mathematics and the humanities. This time by exploring what happens when haiku is used to procrastinate from writing a dissertation, how exactly theorems get born, all the possible continuums upon which feelings can be rated, and the executive summaries of some less than successful grant applications.
Executive Summaries of Less than Successful Grant Applications
Samuel spends a lot of his time searching the internet for cool mathematical things, so you can guess how excited he was when he stumbled on these amazing grant applications.
Calculus of Your Body
After hearing the amazing mathematical poems from the first chapter of Diegetic Plots Samuel decided to try his own hand at mathematical poetry. This is what came out of it.
Much Depends Upon Good Mathematics Haikus In This Episode
Courtney Gibbons was just trying to find a way to not write her dissertation. Little did she know that 17 syllables of mathematics would so entrance Helene Tyler, Andrew Gainer-Dewar, and Greg Stevenson that the next thing they all knew they were engaged in a mathematical haiku battle the likes of which the world had never before seen(to be fair the world had probably never seen any sort of mathematical haiku battle before).
Special thanks to Greg Harries for being a great stand-in Greg.
Bonus Haiku As Promised
From Courtney: Go hear about that time I wrote Facebook haikus about my research
From Helene: Who ever thought that Math haiku would pave my way To internet fame.
The Continuum
This piece was written by Rob Schultz with a tiny, tiny, almost minuscule amount of help from Samuel. The character of Murphy was voiced by Etta Devine and Doc was voiced by Rob.
While the interviews in this episode Relatively Prime are licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license, the authors reserve all rights for the sketches and haiku which appeared in this episode and if you want to reproduce or otherwise use their work please contact the authors to ask for their permission.
f(θ)=1-sin(θ)
Feb 17, 2016
f(θ)=1-sin(θ)
If you ever want to conduct a quick social experiment on the status of mathematics in the world just get yourself a dating profile and mention on it that you are a mathematician. The messages you get will be quite illuminating:
“I hate to break it to you, but while I appreciate math for its logic and beauty, I don’t think I’ll ever like it. lol TOO many formulas.”
“I got up to AP Calc during my senior year of high school, cheated off my best friend on all the tests and still got 70s in the class, and swore off math from thereon.”
Even when people do not say outright that they despise math the contents can leave a bit to be desired:
“I’m awful at math but it fascinates me–much like historical linguistics and conjugating Russian.”
It is not like it was all bad though. Samuel did once get this message:
“I also really like math and spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to get people to like it more!”
But come to think of it he doesn’t think they actually ended up actually going on a date.
We really shouldn’t be so negative about all of this. Samuel has been told by more than one person that being a mathematician makes him sexy, really he has and it is so validating for him, and he doubts anyone ever turned me down for a date just because he loves mathematics. But given all the times he has received messages with gloomy words about math and how often on a first date some of the first words out of his companion’s mouth is how much they hate math he couldn’t help but wonder if mathematics has impacted my dating life negatively, if only a little bit.
Of course mathematics has never let us down in the past, doubt it is going to start now.
Andrea Silenzi was the host of Why Oh Why, a radio show about where love and sex meets technology and she was looking for a date. So when Planet Money called her up and asked if she would be interested in getting some dating advice from economist Tim Harford she definitely said yes.
Samuel spoke with Andrea about what it was like to follow an economist’s advice on dating, why we should not treat dating like a job, and where to draw the line when it comes to formulaic dating.
Helping you Math your way to Someone Special
Back in 2009 for the podcast Strongly Connected Components Samuel interviewed Sam Yagan then the CEO and co-founder of an upstart online dating site which was differentiating itself from the competition by putting a real focus on the data side of dating. That little upstart was OKCupid and Sam is now the CEO of Match Group, which includes Match.com, OkCupid and Tinder. They talked about why OKCupid puts such a focus on math and data, how the OKCupid algorithm relies on its users, and why you shouldn’t stress out on having the perfect dating profile photo.
Full Strongly Connected Components Interview:
Optimal Date Stopping
Mathematics communicator and comedian Matt Parker tells Samuel about the optimal stopping problem, and how it could help him date more effectively.
Masters and Disasters of Relationships
John Gottman is a psychologist, therapist, mathematician, and co-founder, with his wife Julie Schwartz Gottman, of the Gottman Institute where they do research in order to better understand relationships. For our purposes we are most interested in the work John has done in mathematically modelling marriage, in particular the factors which lead to divorce. John tells Samuel about his research, how he transitioned from mathematics to psychology, and what, mathematically, is the biggest predictor of a lasting relationship.
Social Network Leveraged Speed Dating
Andrea and Samuel had so much fun talking about her economist advised dating experiments that they continued chatting for quite a while. This is eventually where they eventually landed.
Principia Metropolica
Feb 11, 2016
Principia Metropolica
Your host Samuel Hansen loves cities. Small Cities, Dense Cities, New Cities, Twin Cities, Reborn Cities, he doesn’t care what type of city cities. He loves them all. This of course made it inevitable Samuel would at some point become interested in the intersection of cities and mathematics, and once he became interested in that intersection it became inevitable he would have to make a podcast featuring stories about it. And now here we are. Cause and effect, it really is a marvelous thing.
Michael Batty is the chair of CASA, the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis . He is also the author of the books The New Science of Cities and Cites and Complexity. Samuel spoke to him about how cities grow, the similarity of cities and trees, and the fractal dimension of cities.
Listen to Samuel’s full interview with Michael Batty:
A Bunch of Two Parameter Driving Models
One truth about living in most cities is traffic, and quite often that truth is slow and all clogged up. As bothersome as all the traffic is, where there is a problem there is often interesting mathematics to do and in this case the mathematics is being tackled by University of Michigan professor Gabor Orosz. Samuel spoke with Gabor about why jams form, if there is any hope in the future for less of them, and what role robots in the hallways of the university play in his studies.
See the Sights
Maths in the City is an outreach program conceived by Marcus du Sautoy which shows groups the mathematics of London and Oxford. Samuel spoke with one of the tour guides, Thomas Woolley about the program and some of the mathematical sights you could see on one of the tours.
Lisa Schweitzer is an Associate Professor of Urban Planning at the Sol Price School of Public Policy at USC. Samuel spoke to Lisa about the intersection of urban planning and mathematics, where mathematical tools are the most useful, where they fall short, and what the role of mathematics and statistics will be in urban planning moving forward.
Kolmogorov’s City
Kolmogorov complexity can be thought of as the smallest amount of computational resources needed to designate some object. Sim City is a computer game where you build and manage cities. Samuel Arbesman is a senior adjunct fellow at the Flatiron Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado. Yes, they do all come together.
Anna Haensch is a Professor of Mathematics at Duquesne University, a mathematics writer, and co-host of The Other Half a pocast about the half of mathematics which helps you makes sense of your own life. Oh, and she tweets too.
Combinations and Permuations was the first podcast Samuel ever hosted. He in no way thinks you should go back and listen to the inane and vulgar jokes he and his fellow mathematics graduate students made during the shows run, but he know he can’t stop you. For Relatively Prime he got some of the old favorites, Nathan Rowe, Sean Breckling, and Brandon Metz, back together in the mail room of UNLV CDC Building 7 to record an episode all about what mathematicians do all day.
This episode of Relatively Prime is going to be delving into the humanistic side of mathematics. It is the first chapter in a recurring series Samuel is calling Diegetic Plots. Yes that is a super nerdy joke, and yes Samuel is super proud of it.
The Colors of Math
Gizem Karaali is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Pomona College and an editor of The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, a journal which looks at mathematics as a human endeavor with am emphasis on the aesthetic, cultural, and sociological aspects of mathematics. She read her poem The Colors of Math.
Division By Zero
Ted Chiang is a multiple Hugo and Nebula award winning science fiction author. Among his work is an amazing bit of math-fiction titled, Division By Zero. Samuel talked to Ted about where the idea for the story came from and what it was like to write about such an abstract mathematical idea. You can find the story in Ted’s short story collection Stories of Your Life and Others where you will also find a lot of other wonderful stories to read.
The interview is followed by a reading of Division By Zero by Jess Charlton, Kitty Stoholski, and Samuel.
Patent World Order
A black hole appears over Samuel’s desk as he tries to introduce the next segment and what appears is frightening.
The Mathematician’s Shiva
Stuart Rojstaczer has been a dishwasher, a college professor, and a grade inflation czar. He is now an author who’s debut novel was published in September 2014. The novel, The Mathematician’s Shiva, is the story of Rachela, the greatest mathematician of her age. It tells the story both of her time in a Soviet Gulag as a child and of the aftermath of her death. Samuel talked to Stuart about how he prepared to write about mathematicians, the importance of balancing all of one’s identities, and a little bit about Navier-Stokes.
A Taste of Mathematics
JoAnne Growney is a poet and a mathematician. She read her poem A Taste of Mathematics which can be found in her poetry collection Red Has No Reason
####While the interviews in this episode Relatively Prime are licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license, the authors reserve all rights for the poems and stories which appeared on this episode and if you want to reproduce or otherwise use their work please contact the authors to ask for their permission.
Mathematics may be the most pure, the most abstract, the most ivory tower of all academic disciplines, but nothing, nothing is beyond the reach of politics. This episode of Relatively Prime looks at how politics effects mathematics and how mathematics can effect politics.
Presidential Pre-Requisites
Mathematics does not tend to be the focus of people who are aiming to become president of the United States, which really is not surprising. There are a lot of lawyers among the previous presidents, along with a few economics and business students. All of which do sound like more expected stepping stones to political office than a degree in mathematics. This does not mean they skip mathematical education in its entirety of course. Samuel spoke with Ronald Merritt of Athens State University about his research into the mathematical educations of US presidents and about which president has a proof included in Elisha Loomis’s book of proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem.
Boxers and Fighting Irish
Della Dumbaugh of University of Richmond tells us two stories of how Nazi Germany and the Boxer Rebellion changed the lives of individual mathematicians and the effects these life changes had on mathematics more broadly.
Surveillance Both Ways
Keith Devlin may not have born in the United States, but he is a very proud US citizen. He had only recently received his citizenship when the tragic events of September 11, 2001 came to pass. After the attacks, like a lot of other really smart people, Keith was contacted by the government and asked to lend his expertise to try and stop another attack. Keith talked to Samuel about went into his decision, whether or not he would make the same decision today, and some stuff which went down in Germany in the 70s.
And All of Gerry’s Man(dering)
Gerrymandering – the dividing of a state, county, etc., into election districts so as to give one political party a majority in many districts while concentrating the voting strength of the other party into as few districts as possible.
Few aspects of politics are as clearly open to mathematical analysis as gerrymandering. Just looking at district maps seems to scream for geometric analysis, and there really are a lot of different tests out there. Samuel spoke to David Austin about some potential gerrymandered districts and ways to test for them, then things got a bit bizarre. Samuel also sat down with Jonathan Hodge to talk about a technique Hodge helped develop to test for gerrymandering called the Convexity Coefficient.
Not all of the ways to test for possible gerrymandering rely on geometry. Duke University Professor Jonathan Mattingly and his former student Christy Vaughn, she is currently a graduate student at Princeton, decided to use probability theory to check to see if the districts used in North Carolina’s 2012 elections had been drawn fairly. The results were eye opening.
We all use mathematics everyday. At least that is what we all like to tell our friends who ask us, “What good is math anyway?” The problem is so much of this everyday mathematics is, how should I say this, non-obvious. No one thinks they are doing mathematics when they figure out the larger peanut butter is not actually a better deal than the smaller size or when they cut across the intersection diagonally to save time or when they decide to ask that friend they don’t really talk to much to spread the word about their new project because that friend has more friends than they do(not that I have any history doing this last one, no history in doing it at all). Sure those are just algebra, geometry, and network analysis problems deep down, but they are also just normal every issues. In this episode of Relatively Prime we look at three regular, everyday problems and use mathematics to make them a bit more comfortable, a bit more pleasant, and, in the case of the first story, a bit more delicious. Oh, and we have a couple quick pieces of advice about how to make pumping gas fun and tipping more secure.
Say you are living in a new city and you haven’t made any new friends yet and your birthday is coming up. This was the exact situation Samuel was in last year. He still wanted to have a cake though, but as he was by himself Samuel was worried if he cut his cake in the traditional way it would go stale. Enter Alex Bellos, Guardian Columnist, author of Here’s Looking at Euclid, The Grapes of Math, and, with Edmund Harriss, the math coloring book Snowflake Seashell Star, to tell Samuel about Sir Francis Galton’s perfect cake cutting technique.
Of course since Samuel recorded the interview with Alex before his birthday something was going to have to happen to make it not relevant. In this case it was a happy occurrence, Samuel actually made a friend with whom he could celebrate his birthday. Which was awesome, except it meant Alex’s cake cutting method wasn’t going to be too useful. Samuel wasn’t going to have a birthday without a mathematically appropriate cake cut though so he called up Steven Brams to determine how to fairly divide his cake between him and his new friend.
Just Choose a Spot Bob
Of course this meant Samuel needed to go get his birthday cake, and in order to do that he was going to need to find himself a parking spot. For most people this is an everyday problem, but since Samuel usually rolls out of bed and lands in front of his microphone he needed some help to choose the best spot to choose when buying his cake. Thankfully Laura Mclay, who writes the blog Punk Rock Operations Research, had his back or he would probably still be driving around the bakery’s parking lot.
Should We Stay or Should We Go
Imagine this: It is a Thursday night and the pub a few blocks away has an Irish music night you really like, but it is a small pub and when there are a lot of people there you don’t enjoy yourself. Should you go to the pub or should you stay home? This is the exact problem W. Brian Arthur found himself having in Santa Fe with the El Farol Bar in the early 90s and being trained in economics and mathematics Brian did the logical thing, he wrote a paper on it.
The Three R’s, Reading Writing and ’Rithmetic, have formed the basis of formal education for centuries, at least since they were mentioned by Sir William Curtis in 1795, even if he probably used Reckoning instead of ‘Rithmetic. Most of the time though the three R’s can be simplified down even further to the two Glyphs, Letters and Numbers.
For most people ‘Rithmetic or reckoning or mathematics or what ever you want to call it, falls directly under the umbrella of numbers. That is not incorrect. Numbers are very much mathematics brand. Numbers are how mathematics is represented to children from a young age and when you show an aptitude for the subject you are often branded a numbers person. There is even a youtube channel featuring videos about cool mathematics called Numberphile.
But mathematics is more than numbers, and before you go making a joke about how of course it is otherwise we could never solve for x, mathematics is more than individual letters too. Letters, and that thing you get when you put a bunch of letters together and make them into words and then you take those words and you put them together according to some set of rules called language, plays a very important role in mathematics. This episode of Relatively Prime, The Lexicon, explores this role.
The Trans-Atlantic Battle
Lynne Murphy is an American born, University of Sussex employed linguist. This made her the perfect person to talk to about the linguistic fight which destroys more Anglo-American mathematical friendships than which type of breakfast pastry to serve at a conference: Is it Math or is it Maths? (Ed. Note: It is math, I do not care at all what the story actually concludes)
Digging Down to the Roots
One of the things about the language of mathematics is a lot of it comes from language, like from the languages that we speak. To be fair not the actual languages we speak, at least not that we speak anymore. Unless you just happen to be a scholar of Greek, Latin, or Arabic.
A discussion of mathematical language which only touched on mathematical words would be really unsatisfying. It would probably feel like only one half of a dialogue. This is of course because it would be skipping over half of what constitutes mathematical language, it would be skipping over symbols.
Today symbols are just as much part of the language of mathematics as words. This is a surprisingly recent development. For example, when Algebra was first being developed it was entirely in prose. Joseph Mazur wrote about how symbols were developed and integrated into mathematics in his book Enlightening Symbols and he spoke to Samuel about the evolution of symbols and how they have changed mathematics.
A Train Left Station U Traveling 40 mph…
There are two words which can elicit a groan in almost any mathematics classroom, word problem. Thankfully this does not have to be the case. Tharanga Wijetunge and Kirthi Premadasa are here with the solution. Their research has shown that using different language to frame the problems can help students not only enjoy the problems more, but also better recall the mathematics.
No Words at All
Tim Chartier is a person who spends half of his life trying to find stories within mathematics and the other half telling those stories in as many ways as possible. While this would be a hard enough task if Tim just wrote books, made videos, and gave podcast interviews. All of which he does, but Tim, along with his wife, have gone one step farther and now tour the world tell mathematical stories without any words at all. That is right, they do mathematical mime.
It hardly seems that a week can go by without seeing another newspaper story or television report about the decline of the American Educational Establishment. Particularly in respect to mathematics. As a product of said establishment Samuel Hansen can not say that he thinks that it is as bad as the doomsayers would have us all think, but that is not to say that he thinks everything is peachy keen either.
There are problems, ranking 25th, out of 34 countries, on the mathematical section of the OECD’s International Student Assessment test, a score they refer to as being Statistically significantly below the average makes that clear. As does the general populace’s ill will towards the subject.
The problems are not insurmountable though, in fact Samuel may have spoken to some the people who will help solve them.
Dan Meyer is a PhD student at Stanford University. He has also spent 6 years teaching high school math, a year as a Cirriculum Fellow at Google, and is the man behind the popular mathematics education blog dy/dan. Samuel first heard about him from the TEDx talk that spread like wildfire across the internet mathematics community.
The Organization:
Math for America is a non-profit that has made its mission since 2004 to improve the state of USA mathematics education by creating a corps of top notch educators and leaders. In order to accomplish this goal they have created fellowships to support new teachers, established teachers, and mathematics teachers that are going into administration. Samuel spoke with the president of Math for America, John Ewing, in their New York offices. He also spoke with Math for America Fellows Meredith Klein and PatrickHonner.
This episode is all about the forgotten mathematical tool of numbers. Ok, forgotten may be a bit strong, but after a certain point in mathematics numbers seem to lose a bit of their importance. For the first few years after you start to learn math it is all add these numbers, divide this number by that one, or find that number. And then it morphs into for all numbers or let x be an arbitrary number or for epsilon greater than zero and numbers start to lose their power.
Well not on this episode. Samuel Hansen has found stories about amazing properties of numbers, how a person started collecting collections of numbers, how research can lead to a number horde which can then lead to more research, and all about favorite numbers.
Tanya Khovanova is a freelance mathematician and mathematical entertainer currently working as a research affiliate at MIT. She is also the mind behind Number Gossip, a website for finding out surprising things about numbers. Her son Alexey Radul helped design Number Gossip, and his son Lev helped give background noise for our interview.
Sequence Encyclopedia:
Neil Sloane started collecting sequences in 1964 as a graduate student at Cornell. His collection was first published in 1973, then again in 1995, and then became the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences in 1996. He also managed to fit 43 years of work at AT&T in there somehow. Samuel caught up with Neil Sloane at the 2012 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston
0% of All Real Numbers:
Michael Shamos is the Distinguished Career Professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. His career has included mathematics, computer science, law, business, and pool. He is the author of “The Catalog of Real Numbers”
David Spiegelhalter Meredith Klein Steven Brams Scott Feld Keith Devlin Dan Meyer Patrick Honner Ron Graham Dmitri Krioukov Jonathon Schaeffer Jerry Grossman Joseph Gallian Edmund Harris Neil Sloane Timothy Gowers Nicholas Christakis John Ewing Michael Shamos Jonathan Middleton
Paul Erdos was one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th Century, the one that other mathematicians measure their distance from, and beyond that one of the most interesting. His highly collaborative, highly nomadic life brought him in touch with hundreds if not thousands of other mathematicians, and every single on of them has their own Erdos story to tell. In order to find out more about the man, Samuel Hansen spoke to three of his collaborators and the man who runs the Erdos Number Project.
Joel Spencer is a Professor in the Computer Science and Mathematics Departments at New York University.
Carl Pomerance is the John G. Kemeny Parents Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Dartmouth College.
Ron Graham is the Irwin and Joan Jacovs Professor in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego and Chief Scientist at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.
There are many similarities between mathematics and music. They are their own vocabulary, their own written language, their own way of describing the world around us, but while they are similar the Venn diagram that contains mathematics and music doesn’t always seem to have a huge overlap. This episode of Relatively Prime brings you three stories from that intersection. First a story of mathematics applied to music, in a way that no musician would have thought up. Next a story of what happen when you take mathematician and musician and combine it into a single person. Finally, the story of a composer and how he has harnessed the power of numbers as a music creation tool.
All music on this episode was provided by the guests
The Shape of Things
Sep 21, 2012
Mathematics is rather unfairly thought of as a numbers game, but there really is much more too it and after scouring the world Samuel Hansen found a man proud to stand on his geometric soapbox, another with some important breaking mathematical news from out of this world, two more who speak with Samuel about his favorite building in the whole world, and finally one who helped to find the shape of something that is generally thought not to have one.
Sometimes an approach you are sure will work yields results. Maybe the Cambridge sandwich year and a unicycle society will lead to traveling around the world talking about the mathematics behind throwing things in the air. Other times a sociologist’s observations about the statistics of networks decades later might help predict epidemics. Also who knows where an epiphany had while giving an exam may lead. For this episode Samuel Hansen searched near and far for stories of what was not expected.
Timothy Gowers is a Professor at Cambrige University, a Fields Medalist, a blogger, and the man who started the Polymath Project, where he and many others from around the world collaborated through comments on his blog to find a new combinatorial proof of the Density Hales-Jewett theorem.
The mathematics that we all learn in school is great. No, really, it is. How can anyone get through life without knowing how to add or subtract. Multiply or divide. Solve for an unknown or factor a polynomial. OK, you might be able to get through life without that last one, but the point still stands, the mathematics that we all learn in school is great. It isn’t everything though. There are a lot of other tools that mathematics has to offer that could enrich people’s lives. On this episode Samuel Hansen rummages through his mathematical tool box and showcases three tools he feel are going to be very important in the coming years.
Game theory has numerous applications in economics and political science, but thanks to the new book by NYU Professor Steven Brams, Game Theory and the Humanities, it has broken out of its shell and started to play in the same realm as Shakespeare and the Bible. Samuel spoke with Professor Brams at the 2012 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston.
Tool 2 Risk:
Risk is a word that can mean anything to anyone. From a technical perspective it is probably best defined as the probability that an action will lead to a negative result, but that is not the definition that most people have in mind when they hear the word. For them risk can be a person, risk can be an action, a loss, or even what makes you feel alive. Risk can have to do with death, with money, or with security. She could be a risk, he can risk it all, you might be told to just take a risk, and you definitely shouldn’t risk your life on getting anyone to agree on a definition of risk. In order to clear up these problems Samuel tracked down two of his favorite Risk minded thinkers. First on the list he spoke with the Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk, as well as the man behind Understanding Uncertainty, David Spiegelhalter. Then he tracked down the stand-up mathematicianMatt Parker, co-creator of Your Days are Numbered: The Maths of Death comedy show(the other mind behind the show was Timandra Harkness).
Tool 3 Relief Geometry:
Recent disasters have taught some people two things: disaster relief shelter is incredibly important and disaster relief shelters have major issues. It was with those thoughts in mind that Vinay Gupta created the original Hexayurt, a zero waste relief structure that can be built from basic materials that already exist in most supply chains, plywood and nails. They were very simple and very small structures, so when he wanted to create an expanded version of the hexayurt he enlisted the help of University of Arkansas mathematicianEdmundHarriss.
You may not think of checkers as an important game intellectually. It certainly has never had the cachet of chess. That did not stop it from becoming the obsession of the University of Alberta computer science professor for nearly two decades and the center of one of the most ambitious Artificial Intelligence projects ever undertaken. This is their story.
Chinook is the greatest checkers player in the world, in fact it is impossible to beat. The product of an 18 year project in computer artificial intelligence, Chinook represents one of the greatest breakthroughs in computer game playing and was the first machine to ever hold a human world championship.
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In this chapter of Diegetic Plots on Relatively Prime 
Cancer is a truly terrible disease. We all know it too, in fact it is very likely not a person reading this right now who has not had their own lives or the lives of their nearest and dearest affected by it. This includes your host Samuel.
This is one reason Samuel was so interested in hearing to the two brilliant mathematicians you will be hearing from today talk about the work they have been doing using mathematics to better understand how to tackle this horrible disease.
