Mathematical Communication is a developing collection of resources for engaging students in writing and speaking about mathematics, whether for the purpose of learning mathematics or of learning to communicate as mathematicians.

About Math Comm

This site originated in the M.I.T. Department of Mathematics, which offers about ten communication-intensive courses, many of which are led by a different instructor each semester. The department created a website to engage and support this community of instructors and to facilitate the archiving of course materials and the gleaning of “good practices” for these courses. These “good practices” are based on the contributions, knowledge, &/or experience of many people: since 2012, contributors are named where their material appears within the site; contributors prior to 2011 are listed below.

Instructors for undergraduate seminars:

Sami Assaf, Olivier Bernardi, Scott Carnahan, Henry Cohn, Christopher Dodd, Sigurdur Helgason, Victor Kac, Steven Kleiman, Daniel Kleitman, George Lusztig, Grace Lyo, Mia Minnes, Neil Olver, Pedro Reis, Peter Shor, Andrew Snowden, Daniel Tam, Fabrizio Zanello, and more recent instructors credited where their material appears within the site.

Instructors and teaching assistants for a mathematics project lab class:

Michael Artin, Haynes Miller, Bjorn Poonen, Paul Seidel, David Vogan, Tom Mrowka, Julee Kim, Giorgia Fortuna, David Jerison, Chris Dodd, Ivan Losev, Grace Lyo, David Jordan, Scott Sheffield, Asaf Nachmias, Joel Lewis, Alejandro Morales. The page for this class has been updated since 2011 based on improvements made by more recent instructors and TAs: Tomasz Mrowka, Chris Schommer-Pries, Zhiwei Yun, Richard Stanley, Mahir Hadzic, Thomas Bitoun, Haynes Miller, Nat Stapleton, Saul Glasman, Larry Guth, Michael Andrews, David Jerison, Ting Zhou, John Binder, Homer Reid, Padma Srinivasan, and more recent instructors credited where their material appears within the site.

Lecturers and recitation instructors for a class with a communication recitation:

Joel Lewis, Craig Desjardins, Hans Christianson, Todd Kemp, Katrin Wehrheim, Mohammed Abouzaid, Peter Speh, Richard Melrose, Kyle Ormsby, Clark Barwick, Hamid Hezari, and more recent instructors credited where their material appears within the site.

Lecturers for a communication-intensive lecture class:

Peter Shor, Michel Goemans, and more recent instructors credited where their material appears within the site.

Class in principles of mathematical communication:

Steven Kleiman

Other contributors:

Steven Johnson, Leslie Perelman, and others credited where their material appears within the site.

Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication lecturer and site editor:

Susan Ruff, and others credited where their material appears within the site

The site was developed using WordPress as a collaboration between the math department, M.I.T.’s Writing Across the Curriculum (now Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication), and M.I.T.’s Office of Educational Innovation and Technology, and has been live since the beginning of the 2009 fall term.

Site concept:

Mia Minnes, Sami Assaf, Susan Ruff

Technical team:

Violeta Ivanova (lead), Brett Mellor, Mitcho Erlewine, Delisha Peterson (Burnt Orange Design), Becky Ecung

In 2010 the NSF awarded an NSDL grant to make the site public. The public site was created with the help and support of many of those listed above. In addition, M.I.T.’s materials have been merged with a wealth of resources from other institutions, many of which were found online by undergraduate researchers at M.I.T. Since the conclusion of the grant, undergraduate webcontent specialists supported by the M.I.T. Department of Mathematics have periodically searched for recent materials to update the site.

Undergraduate researchers and webcontent specialists:

Noor Doukmak (2011), Artur Araujo (2011), Cyrus Rich (TeXnician, 2011), Marie de Azevedo (2016), email hidden; JavaScript is required" data-hovercard-owner-id="84">Sandeep Silwal (2019), Maria Fedyk (2022-2023).

Principle Investigator:

Haynes Miller

The public site is hosted by the Mathematical Association of America (formerly as part of MathDL). Current and past editors are listed here.

The story of the site’s origins is illustrated in a poster presented at the NSDL National Meeting.

Now it’s your turn. Please suggest improvements and contribute materials.

License: CC BY-NC-SA Page content licensed by MAA MathDL Mathematical Communication under the license:
CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike)

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