I'm at this webinar right now about #RCV and Santa Claus just entered the chat !?!?

Great point about product vs. process in this book review on AI in education: "Learning requires critical engagement with productive failure," but "learners often mistake our intentions because education systems and our culture put so much emphasis on grades" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

My "Math, Revealed" series is freely available to anyone -- no paywall! -- in the thread below.

Whenever someone reports a percentage but not an absolute number, ask yourself why; whenever someone reports an absolute number but not a percentage, ask yourself why

"Next semester, do less that means more" Thinking about what this might mean for a calculus course. What can we do less of to make space for more meaningful learning experiences?

My 7-year-old has made up something she calls an "equation joke": Q: Why was 3 afraid of 5? A: Because 5 8 13! #TMWYK

My new #math series in the New York Times, "Math Revealed," is aimed at everyone, whether you love math or not. Have a look! You can read it here for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Today's example of Betteridge's Law of Headlines comes to us via the Boston Globe: Trump says Harvard is teaching ‘remedial mathematics.’ Is there any truth to that? www.bostonglobe.com/2025/06/08/n... Explanation of Betteridge's Law: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteri...

We lament that students are disengaged from the important parts of learning and yet here are professors modeling the same kind of disengagement. Where does this end? I'm very sympathetic to the problems of too many students, not enough time. Those were the circumstances for my entire career.

...allowing an LLM to make your presentation from your notes is to actively avoid what is, in reality, part of the creation of that presentation. I've been doing a couple of these things a week since January and I can tell you that making the slides always always always results in changes.

2. But the more pernicious risk may be what I call "self-alienation" that is you gradually remove yourself from the experience of your job until you've entirely lost touch with what is and meaningful about this work. Processing student writing with an LLM is not the same thing as reading it...

1. Faculty who use LLMs for core aspects of their labor are inviting their own replacement. This is obvious and a cycle that will mirror what happened with adjunctification. You are showing you are unnecessary. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/blog...

We are right at one month away from the 2025 Grading Conference (June 11--13), and have just posted the schedule. Check out all the amazing presentations we will have this year! www.centerforgradingreform.org/grading-conf...

The new pope has a BS in mathematics from Villanova, which explains how he was so successful at becoming the largest cardinal.

If we do not find an alternative source of funding, this means that the US will not be represented in ongoing conversations with the global community about issues in mathematics education. The isolationism is not just political, it is also intellectual and will have consequences for decades.

I am the current chair of the US National Commission for Mathematics Instruction. Our commission represents the US in an international community of mathematics education under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences. Our very modest NSF funding has not been renewed. #iteachmath

"In a data-driven society, numeracy is essential for making decisions evaluating information and holding leaders accountable. Civil rights leader Bob Moses rightfully called math literacy the civil rights issue of the 21st century."

I would actually prefer it if my discipline wasn't used as a proxy for intelligence / academic worth in the culture wars.

Fun fact I just learned: Google Sheets does precedence wrong. It interprets "=-A2^2" as (-A2)^2 rather than -(A2^2).

Great suggestions here for math instructors at all levels: 1. Meet students where they are 2. Show students that instructors authentically care about their learning 3. Provide "interesting, challenging and joyful work to all students"

Today is Bandcamp Friday.

And what better place to talk about alternative grading than at the Grading Conference, June 11--13? 😄

"We are so familiar with the concept of linearity that we impose our linear frame of reference on data we observe in the real world." This makes me wonder whether the abundance of proportional reasoning problems in early school math conditions us to see everything as linear.

"A lover of puzzles and crosswords while growing up in Pittsburgh during the Great Depression, Mrs. Parsons deciphered German military messages that had been created by an Enigma machine."

Meet Padi Fuster Aguilera, a scientist who refuses to stay silent A Catalan mathematician, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado-Boulder and outspoken advocate for social justice, Padi Fuster Aguilera stands at the intersection of science, education and activism.

🧮 Join us for Math Playground – a day of hands-on math fun for all ages! Sat, May 3 | 10AM–1PM Cambridge Street Upper School, 850 Cambridge St. Games, activities, and a special screening of Counted Out. 🔗 Register: camb.ma/4iGNRLW #CambridgeMA #MathPlayground #STEAM

According to @fairvote.bsky.social's analysis, Massachusetts ranks very low (#40) in voter turnout and dead last (#50) in closeness of elections because our average margin of victory is 66% points (!)

Do you have something to say about alternative grading? We're looking for guest posters on Grading for Growth!

This Friday is Bandcamp Friday.

Quote from that New Yorker piece: "You can no longer *make* students do the reading or the writing. So what’s left? Only this: give them work they want to do. And help them want to do it. What, again, is education? The non-coercive rearranging of desire."

Highly recommend this piece by D. Graham Burnett that really grapples with the fact that LLMs can produce an incredibly convincing simulation of human thought, but also why we can't treat the simulation as the same was what happens when humans think. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Letter to the editor in today's NY Times advocates for gradeless education! She even links to relevant articles and research, including posts by @jessifer.bsky.social and @alfiekohn.bsky.social #edusky #ungrading www.nytimes.com/2025/04/26/o...

"This is all to say that it’s easy to get caught by a number wielded like a club. Whenever you hear someone make a point by tossing around a big number, you should run it through your own filter of what makes sense." Great real-world example here for a quantitative literacy class! #iteachmath

"There’s no analogous national conversation about the experience of higher-ed employees in the second Trump era. We have the same stress, uncertainty, fear, and harm that affected higher-ed workers during the peak of the pandemic but without the same level of institutional recognition or action."

Exclusive: The director of the National Science Foundation announced his resignation today, 16 months before his 6-year term ends, in a letter to staff obtained by Science. scim.ag/42vc3fn

Today's @newyorker.com crossword features a notable mathematician! www.newyorker.com/puzzles-and-... What's your 19-Across number?

Definitely turning this into a Calculus II worksheet for students to verify!

I turned my most boring math lesson into one of my most engaging ones. Here's how:

✅ #RankedChoiceVoting gives voters more choices and elects leaders accountable to all voters. ✅ RCV is the antidote to “lesser of two evils” politics. ✅ RCV offers a path back from record levels of political polarization. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Glad there's no injuries! But wow... very dangerous, that's a typically busy station. I'm on that platform every morning on my way to work!

Mathematician and former NFL player John Urschel was interviewed by the Harvard Crimson recently and was asked: "Has your mathematical knowledge ever been useful to you in a football game?" www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

My immigrant story, with reflections on what's happening today. www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/...

From the article: "'Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government,' two attorneys from Harvard wrote in a letter to federal officials. 'Accordingly, Harvard will not accept the government’s terms as an agreement in principle.'"

Anyway, crazy times. The mission of helping people learn math more deeply and powerfully seems, if anything, more important than ever.

Trying to write a blog post about the bad math modeling underlying the tariffs. In the time since I started it, the tariffs on China went from 20% to 54% to 104% to 125% to 145%, and tariffs on other countries paused and went down to 10%.

Registration is now open for the Social Choice: Theory and Computation conference at @wellesley.edu, October 15-17, 2025. mathematics-democracy-institute.org/2025-social-...

Sharing some good national media coverage of things happening in Boston, for anyone curious about what's actually happening around here. First, this NYT article from yesterday about grant funding for Harvard and many Boston hospitals: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/06/u...

Wow, a post from Lew about AI without that ridiculous Hobbit-esque artwork?! (e.g. maa.org/wp-content/u...)

Join us today on the @bostoncitycouncil.bsky.social for our working session on Ranked Choice Voting to strengthen our democracy!