Mathematical Communication Blog
A Nobel Writing Effort
The May 2013 issue of the American Mathematical Monthly includes a timely reprint of the influential 1962 article “College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage” by David Gale and Lloyd S. Shapley. This paper serves as an exemplary model of mathematical exposition, one that every author should strive to emulate. With admirable brevity and dry… read more
Summer School Exposition
Your audience consists of about 100 talented mathematics students, gathered from around the world. Some are high school juniors and seniors; others are college freshmen and sophomores. How would you present a topic of current mathematical interest to this group in such a way that they, too, can share in the excitement of mathematical discovery?… read more
John Allen Paulos to Receive Math Communications Award
John Allen Paulos is the recipient of the 2013 Joint Policy Board for Mathematics (JPBM) Communications Award. A professor of mathematics at Temple University, Paulos is the author of eight books, including Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences, and numerous, widely read columns, commentaries, and reviews. He is also a lively, provocative presence on Twitter… read more
Magical Mathematics and Topological Barcodes
Two MAA awards for exemplary writing have been announced, and the prizes will be presented during the Joint Prize Session on Thursday, January 10, 2013, at the 2013 Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego, California. The Euler Book Prize goes to Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham for Magical Mathematics: The Mathematical Ideas That Animate Great… read more
Best Writing on Mathematics
For the last three years, Princeton University Press has published annually a handy collection of previously published articles under the title The Best Writing on Mathematics. Edited again by Mircea Pitici, the 2012 volume is now available. The widely varying articles in these collections are of interest not only for the information they contain but… read more
A Poetic Route to Mathematics
Finding a way to connect mathematics with the interests of people who aren’t necessarily mathematically inclined is one of the challenges of speaking to a general audience. In a public lecture earlier this year at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, mathematician Katherine Socha chose a novel approach, using the lines and images of a… read more
Communicating Mathematics at the JMM
The Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego, January 9-12, 2013, will feature a number of sessions devoted to the communication of mathematics, starting with a minicourse and continuing with the MAA retiring presidential address, an invited paper session, and a contributed paper session. MAA Minicourse: Teaching and Assessing Writing and Presentations: Collaborative Development of Pedagogy… read more
The Proper Abstract
Mathematicians rarely have the opportunity to present their research directly to a broad scientific audience. One of the few venues to do so is publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Published weekly and online, this prestigious journal features papers covering a wide range of disciplines, from applied mathematics and computer… read more
The Only Conundrum
One of the things that irritates me most when I’m reading, whether it’s a novel, a newspaper article, or a mathematics paper, is the misplaced “only.” If you write “Here we only calculate the position of two vertices” you probably mean “Here we calculate the position of only two vertices.” The word “only” is there… read more
Obvious Trouble
Terms such as “clearly,” “obviously,” and “it can easily be shown that” do not belong in the mathematical literature. Authors who use them (and editors who allow them) do a great disservice to their readers. Jokes about the mathematical abuse of these terms have been around for a long time, including the following translations of… read more