Mathematics isn’t about finding answers. It’s about asking questions. As a mathematician, here’s a question I usually find boring: What’s the answer? Consider this manifestation of a sort of meme that wanders the internet: The most likely intended answer is 73, just to get that out of the way. I’ll call this “Witch”. This is…
Author: Clio
Talking Honestly About Genitals
Cisgender folks, we need to talk about language again. I’ll be talking about genitals, so some may consider this essay not safe for work (NSFW). The other day, I was writing a comparison between home-made face masks (low effectiveness against COVID-19) and penile condoms (high effectiveness against pregnancy and STD transfer). What struck me is…
Race and Class Privilege in the Age of COVID-19
Madonna recently referred to the COVID-19 pandemic as “the great equalizer”. In the sense that any infection itself doesn’t care about wealth, ethnicity, or background, she’s right. But the harsh reality is that our US culture is deeply steeped in inequities that impact our experiences, including during times of crisis like this. Both the mainstream news…
Adding Fractions: The Common Error
This is one of the most common mistakes students make when adding fractions: \[\frac34 + \frac67=\frac9{11}\] For a long time, I thought that students did this solely based on confusion with multiplication. While we teach addition of integers before multiplication, addition of fractions is a more complicated process. To multiply fractions, multiply the numerators and…
white paint
i covered my canvas with seventeen layers of white paint, one for each time i lost my purity like a picture of Dorian Gray, in reverse, a testament to my slow corruption into adulthood some dreams are shattered all at once, some are left intact, but mine were stripped from me, like seventeen layers of…
Mathematics and Trauma
I teach two sections of Honors Algebra II and two sections of Algebra II. Today, I introduced the concept of finding roots of rational functions. I did this with a discovery-based task. The student response to the task contained a lot of learning for me, and not just in the form of what they wrote…
What a Non-Binary Person Looks Like
I need to clarify something, because people still seem confused about this. Non-binary people are all younger, except the ones who are older. Children can be non-binary. So can retirees. A non-binary person has long hair. Unless we have short hair. Or we could have asymmetrical hair. Mohawks are nice. So are buzzcuts. Mullets, too….
Logarithms: The Dark Sorcery
I used to hate logarithms. They were hopelessly confusing. Sort of like this: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/operations This is the third year now that I’ve been teaching Algebra II. Each year, my understanding of logarithms increases, and my love increases in kind. One reason I disliked logarithms is because of the way in which we tend to compartmentalize…
perception
Today instead of “male-presenting” I referred to “male-perceived”. It was a moment of exhaustion and missing the intended word, or so I thought until I reflected later and realized that this is why I’m not fond of “male-presenting”. Because I don’t “present” as a man. I don’t wake up in the morning and make choices…
Black History Month: Mathematicians
For Black History Month 2020, I wrote a brief biography of noteworthy African-American mathematicians. This is not meant to be a canonical, prioritized, or exhaustive list, although many of these mathematicians are often on “best of” or “firsts” lists. There are many more Black mathematicians whose names deserve to be known, a list that grows…