Chasing Rabbits was my last math book. And this blog, will be my last one regarding mathematics. The reality is, that for me, I have nothing more to write about this subject in a macro, philosophical sphere beyond our own need and desire for wellness. I will still be giving…
The entire history of mathematics has been about slow, repeated failure — leaving a glorious residue of misconceptions, incorrect ideas, and broken proofs. That is the only story of mathematics, and it perfectly encapsulates the collective humanness which has stained thousands of years of exploration.
Our own stories are just…
Black Lives Matter was not a “2020” thing. Just being conservative, it is the third decade of the 21st century thing. Unfortunately, the pandemic has wiped out almost 2 years of in-person conferences. …
Winning has been on of the most entrenched ideas in North American culture. You can’t win if you don’t achieve. Even if you don’t win — or worse, don’t want to win — it’s hard to escape the culture of performance and production. That these things can be measured is…
Governments should NEVER be trusted to oversee the writing of a math curriculum for one simple fact: they also run lotteries. Nobody is going to dispute that budgeting and learning how to save is important, but if you think that making math practical in that realm is some kind of…
The fantasy cover look of the book was intentional. Calming forest. Wildflowers. A girl chasing a rabbit. A colorful prism floating in the just below the title — where a magical castle might be in some mythic fable. …
In case you don’t live in the Province of Ontario, you might not be aware of the fact that a seismic event happened(which was intended to be anything but) a few days ago when this passage from the new Ontario Math Curriculum was…removed.
Removed(it deserves its own sentence and paragraph…
It was early December, 2005. I was in Vienna for a two full days of training for the International Baccalaureate program, which I was teaching at The International School of Lausanne in Switzerland. I remember a very specific moment where we were marking IB exam papers, and matching them up…
It’s not a coincidence that a documentary about Anthony Bourdain comes out months before my final book, where an entire chapter is about him and the lens he gave me to see my relationship with mathematics with the same feral and romantic perspective that marked his entire career as a…
Think of the moment when kids understand that fingers — not just their fingers — is a way to count. Think also when they count two for legs on a chicken and also time passage in terms of days. There is a ton of abstraction that we all fall into…
