Devlin's Angle

New Devlin's Angle posts can be found on the Mathematical Association of America's Math Values blog. This site will remain live as an archive for all previous posts.

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2019/01/new-devlins-angle-posts-can-be-found-on.html

This month, it will be exactly 22 years since the MAA first went online. After its initial release in 1994, the web browser Netscape had, by 1996, started to acquire users rapidly, in the process...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2018/11/to-boldly-go_30.html

I sometimes use this column to float an idea I think deserves attention. Not on a whim, but after considerable thought and discussion with others expert in the relevant domain(s). This is one of ...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2018/11/t-assessment-bold-suggestion-modestly_2.html

“In math you have to remember, in other subjects you can think about it.” That statement by a female high-school student, was quoted by my Stanford colleague Prof Jo Boaler in her 2009 book W...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2018/10/its-high-time-to-re-focus-systemic.html

The above tweet caught my eye recently. The author is a National Board Certified mathematics teacher in New York City who has an active social media presence. Is his claim correct? Not surpri...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2018/09/is-math-really-beautiful.html

By Keith Devlin You can follow me on Twitter @profkeithdevlin First, congratulations to Caucher Birkar, Alessio Figalli, Peter Scholze, and Akshay Venkatesh on being awarded the Fields Me...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2018/08/how-fields-medal-led-to-mathematical.html

By Keith Devlin You can follow me on Twitter @profkeithdevlin 21ST CENTURY MATH: THE MOVIE All my Devlin’s Angle posts this year so far have studied the dramatic shift that took place ov...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2018/07/by-keith-devlin-you-can-follow-me-on.html

By Keith Devlin You can follow me on Twitter @profkeithdevlin Last month, my two greatest passions collided: mathematics and cycling. On my way back from a short biking trip to the Californi...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2018/06/cycling-can-be-such-drag-and-math-can.html

By Keith Devlin You can follow me on Twitter @profkeithdevlin Ever since mathematics got properly underway around 3,000 years ago, there was only one way to achieve access to the field. Yo...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2018/05/calculation-was-price-we-used-to-have.html

By Keith Devlin You can follow me on Twitter @profkeithdevlin NOTE: This article is the final installment of a four-episode mini-series posted here starting in mid-January. In writing it, ...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2018/04/how-todays-pros-solve-math-problems.html

By Keith Devlin You can follow me on Twitter @profkeithdevlin CHANGE OF PLAN: When I wrote last month’s post, I said I would conclude the description of my Nueva School Course  this time. ...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2018/03/how-todays-pros-solve-math-problems_9.html

Last month, I wrote about my recent experience teaching a three-day mini-course in the Nueva School January electives “Intersession” program. What I left out was a description of the course ...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2018/02/how-todays-pros-solve-math-problems.html

I gave a short course at a local high school recently. Three days in a row, two hours a day, to fifteen students. To my mind, it was a huge success. By the end of the course, the students had suc...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2018/01/deja-vu-all-over-again.html

The pie chart in the above tweet jumped out of the page when it appeared in my twitter feed on September 14. My initial shock at seeing the figure 1% attached to a region of the pie chart tha...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2017/12/clash-of-representations.html

American courts have never appeared to be very receptive to mathematical arguments, in large part, some (including me) have assumed, because many judges do not feel confident evaluating mathemati...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2017/11/mathematics-and-supreme-court.html

Monty Hall with a contestant in Let's Make a Deal. The news that American TV personality Monty Hall died recently (The New York Times, September 30 ) caused two groups of people to sit up a...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2017/10/monty-hall-may-now-rest-in-peace-but.html

Keith Devlin and Jonathan Borwein talk to host Robert Krulwick on stage at the World Science Festival in 2011. At the end of this week I fly to Australia to speak and participate in the Jona...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-legacy-of-jonathan-borwein.html

Exactly 30 years ago, I and my family arrived in the U.S. from the U.K. to take up a one-year visiting position in the mathematics department at Stanford University. (We landed on July 28, 1987.)...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2017/08/what-are-universities-for-and-how-do.html

The great mathematician Karl Freidrich Gauss is frequently quoted as saying “What we need are notions, not notations.” While most mathematicians would agree that Gauss was correct in poin...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-power-of-simple-representations.html

Many math instructors use clickers in their larger lecture classes, and can cite numerous studies to show that they lead to more student attention and better learning. A recent research paper on ...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2017/06/classroom-clickers-are-good-except-when.html

My May post is more than a little late. The initial delay was caused by a mountain of other deadlines. When I did finally start to come up for air, there just did not seem to be any suitable math...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-math-gift-myth.html

The first reviews of my new book Finding Fibonacci have just come out, and I have started doing promotional activities to try to raise awareness. As I expected,  one of the first reviews I saw ...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2017/04/fibonacci-and-golden-ratio-madness.html

Devlin makes a pilgrimage to Pisa to see the statue of Leonardo Fibonacci in 2002. In 1983, I did something that would turn out to have a significant influence on the direction my career wo...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2017/03/finding-fibonacci.html

The power of numbers to help us understand our world.

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2017/02/hans-rosling-july-27-1948-february-7.html

Two years ago, there was a sudden, viral spike in online discussion of the Ramanujan identity 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + . . . = –1/12 This identity had been lying around in the mathematical lit...

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2017/01/so-thats-what-it-means-visualizing.html