Category Archives: math

Keep In Touch

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First day of a new mathematics seminar, a tried idea that has not had much success in my department before. We need to create a better community with our majors, and, well, no one has any other ideas. I took point on putting it together. My first idea was a meet and greet with games for faculty and students. My colleagues indulged me, and we had students and faculty continue playing well over the hour mark, and feedback was good that this was fun. I was pretty sure I could see it in the students. I think there were even some good conversations about how math could be seen in the games. Cross fingers we can carry this momentum forward to victory!

I get a little overexcited and overstimulated by things like that. I came home wanting a hug. My wish was to be granted, the following arrived in the mail today, from a former student. 20160926_194126 She’s recently completed a tour in the Peace Corps, and enclosed was a souvenir and postcards from her post-Corps trip as she returned to the USA.

I had a voicemail waiting as well from another student who took the GRE today and kicked some serious GRE booty. Somehow I got some credit for that, but I’m not the one who was butt in chair doing the studying.

I tell students that I love to hear from them in the future. If ever they want to write and wonder if they should, YES, YOU SHOULD. And it’s true; I absolutely do.

Cutting Corners

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I was grading papers and computer code earlier today. When students’ code doesn’t agree with mine, I wonder why. When it looks nothing like the pseudocode in our book, I wonder where it came from. First hit, Wikipedia. There’s the same code with a few names changed to disguise it.

I’m clear in course policies that copying code is against the rules. It’s printed on every assignment that involves code. Do not copy code. It’s in the syllabus, noting that the minimum sanction will be a zero on the assignment.

On the flip side, you can go from the pseudocode in the book to actual code, and I’ve got no issue with that. That’s what the pseudocode in the book is for.

The first case was so blatant, that it’s pretty obvious what I need to do.

Then there’s the second case. This time the code from Wikipedia was modified to fit in an alternative environment, but it’s still pretty clearly the Wikipedia code, and certainly not the pseudocode from our book.

I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. No, I don’t want to forbid students from looking at internet resources, I think you can learn a lot of valuable things that way. But, if you are assigned to code something we learned about in class, I expect your main resource to be either materials from class or from the book, not copying and pasting something off the internet.

It never occurred to me that I would have to spell that out. Maybe I need to spell that out.

I see an ugly situation in my future. I know I can handle it. But this year has been such a year of handling and struggling. Part of me just wants to hide.

Add to my mistakes: looking myself up on RateMyProfessor. Never got any feedback from Texas A&M. But the complainers are out from my new school. I give too much work and it is *so* hard. I don’t help enough in class, and I have a good teaching philosophy, but I just don’t use it.

Note to self: don’t look at that stuff. Haters gonna hate. Your job is to teach, and to ask hard questions. If you are only asking easy questions, something is wrong with what you are doing.

But another part of my job is to motivate students to want to try and do well. I wish I knew what I could do better at that. On that, I thought this was a good article. Rethinking Positive Thinking.

Painful truth

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Dear Students,

I know I upset one of you today, and goodness knows whether I will upset more of you tomorrow when I actually hand back homework.

The student I talked to today worked very hard and felt he got robbed on his score. Unfortunately, he just got the math wrong. Scores in general were lower than I would have liked them to be. I know I caught some students out — they were not thinking that 2 weeks to do homework means 2 weeks of homework to be done. I know others got caught thinking that if a few problems were easy then they all would be easy.

I don’t know if I’m harder or more conscientious than other instructors. I do know that I believe that all of you can master this material and get it right. I know that I am going to push you to get to that level.

If I tell you that you got something right when you really didn’t, I am leading you into complacency when you are capable of doing more and doing better. I would rather have you angry with me and have you figure out how to make a stronger, better effort to get things right and understand why you are right than have you satisfied with your grade and mediocre at solving problems.

Would you rather believe a pleasant lie or know a painful truth? I have always lived on the side of painful truths. Today feels like one.

Honestly? I want you to like me. I want you to enjoy my class. I want you to learn a lot. I want you to grow. I know that all those things go together. If you hate me, and you hate my class, learning a lot and growing are less likely to occur. But if I have to give you a false sense of the merit of your work to make you like me, that won’t work either.

So, if you get this homework back and you need to be angry with me, I encourage you to be angry with me. Anger at me that keeps you motivated and working is better than anger at yourself that is paralyzing and makes you think, “Why should I even try? Why should I even bother?” Or worse, fall into inaction because of those thoughts.

I am a grown woman, with a strong soul. I can handle your anger.

That said, I hope that I can bring honesty and encouragement and grace and motivation to you. I hope that I can be someone who helps you to believe in yourself. I hope that I can hold you to high standards, and motivate you to hold yourself to high standards and help you see that you are capable of meeting them. Even when the work is far, far from easy.

That’s what I want for you. That’s what I want for me. That’s what I want for this class, and every other class that I teach.

With sincerity, and encouragement, and even, yes, with love,

Dr. Jinx

Discouragements

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The last thing you want when starting a new job is to run into trouble straight out of the starting gate.

My grad class is now down to 2 students. I had 4 last quarter. Both of the students who dropped either are struggling with prerequisites and the material, or struggling with study skills and study habits (or possibly both). I don’t think anythings gone off the rails this quarter; the opposite in fact.

For background see

Instead of having me lecture and them sit passively (since I can’t stop them from being passive), I am having them read the sections and hand in an outline before we cover the section in class. The outline is worth 2 points. You did it is 2 points, you sorta did it is 1 point, and you didn’t bother is 0 points. I discovered quickly that “outline” is a foreign concept. If you are outlining a section that is broken down into subsections with differently colored bold faced headers, then, it seems obvious to me that every subsection must be summarized by at least one sentence. And, if there’s a major formula, theorem, or method of doing things in there, that should definitely get a mention as well. Last, they should put any questions or points of confusion in their outlines. I review these before class and make sure I’m ready to answer their questions.

I’m sure computer science isn’t happy about this. Of course, after they blew off my request to talk about the course over the break and complained to my department chair instead, I am also not so happy with them.

I wonder how this will all figure into the tenure equation in a few years. Meanwhile, I am trying to remind myself to bring my honor to my work. It doesn’t have to be my best work ever, but it has to be an honorable effort. To try not to work too hard, since part of the reason for coming here is to have more of a life. And to enjoy what I can, each day and each week. Our lives are time, and we don’t get redos on the past. In the worst case, I get to look for another job eventually, and there’s a good chance I could get one of those tech jobs I’m supposedly training this group for on the west side, and earn 2x what I am here for doing it. That would not be the end of the world.

I love teaching. I want to do it well. Universe, please help me out here.

Meanwhile, I will remember a favorite quote, “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.” (Mary Anne Radmacher) I will try again tomorrow.

Getting Started

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Second day of class today. We got down to mathematical business in the multivariate calculus class. The first class talked to each other and me, but the second class was a lot of silence. Gotta work on that. I feel like I’ve given them things to do and think about (including in class) and that’s what I want.

In the graduate numerical methods class, we had our first work day. The students have my standard LaTeX assignment to work through. They were new LaTeX, and I was new to the computer lab… it didn’t go completely smoothly, but it went. I’m worried that students will start working on documents in the lab and then not be able to get their documents off the computer later, but, ultimately, that’s not my problem.

We’ll talk about it tomorrow. As expected my computer scientists, one the most part, took to LaTeX like ducks take to water.

I’m not completely ready for what I need to teach tomorrow yet, but I’m not far off. And, as of tomorrow at 2 pm, my third day is through, and I am off to a good start.

I am worried about everything that October is going to bring. I have to have a 30 minute talk ready (I *thought* somehow it would be 15!) for the weekend of October 11, and I have to have a 40 minute talk on another topic ready for Oct 28. Somehow it will all get done, right?

At least that’s what I keep telling myself. One small step at a time.

Assistant Professor

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First day of class. First day of class on the tenure track. First day of class doing something that, for a while, I wasn’t sure I dared dream I could do.

I don’t know for sure what will stick in memory from this day or from this quarter, but I know there will be things that will stick because of the ephemeral sweetness of a first time doing something.

I know that some things will go well and others poorly, but I will improve from here. Right now I am still acclimatizing to this place, to this culture, and trying to figure out what I need to do.

I didn’t do much math today; mostly I tried to start the foundation of a classroom culture that is warm and accepting, supportive, hardworking, where everyone can have a voice if she or he wants.

The one fun math thing I did was in the numerical methods class for the master’s students. I said epsilon > 0. True or false, 1+epsilon > 1. And we voted. Everyone voted for true. Including me. And I voted for false too. And then explained that for a mathematician the statement is obviously and trivially true. But not so on a computer. I pulled up Python and did a demo to show. And that’s to some extent what the class is about. How and why do computers make mathematical errors and what can we do to avoid them?

And onward from here. Today 3 classes taught. Tomorrow, 9 am, my 4th class taught at my new school.

Last Week

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It is the beginning of the last week before I move. Monday July 28 is moving day.

It is a bizarrely cool morning here for July, nice to sit outside with a small sweater on.

This has never been a perfect house or yard, something has always been asking for my attention. Maybe all houses are like that. But it has been a pretty house, and often a pretty yard, and I am grateful for my years here.

We had a party on Friday from my math colleagues, and a picnic Monday from my bicycling colleagues. I have been very loved by many people. In ways I have undoubtedly not appreciated. I am grateful, very grateful for that.

I am grateful to have found a missing part of myself in teaching. Grateful to the colleagues who helped me get started. Grateful to those who supported my efforts and told me I was doing a good job. It’s been a journey, and it isn’t done yet.

I am grateful for my colleague with whom I am researching. I still feel like a baby researcher, unsure of myself or my worth. Thank you for your trust and belief in me, and willingness to work with me and help me find my feet. After many situations and experiences which haven’t fit, I am grateful to be here, scared of screwing up, but using my lessons from before to try to do a better job.

I am sorry to leave this place, sorry to leave this section of my life. I know there is a new section ahead of me, and many adventures to have, but walking into the unknown is hard for me. Being lonely is hard for me. It will take time to make new friends and feel like I am secure in a new start.

I am grateful my colleagues there are planning a warm welcome — they will help me move in. That’s amazing. Thank you.

Now I need to get to some packing and sorting for today. After all, I only have about a week left.

Lessons

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This semester I have two students who are honors course contracting my classes. This means that they want honors credit for the class, and we create a written agreement about what they have to do to get it. In practical reality, I write the contracts with some broad leeway so that we are doing extra work but the exact details are somewhat fluid, and easily customizable to my needs or the students’ needs. Sometimes I think I should be more formal about it, but so many classes like this I don’t teach very often, and so, no, I don’t have enough mastery of the material to really know ahead of time.

One of my honors students has not been showing up to class. I get that he’s generally smart enough to learn the material on his own. And I also get that the engineering school is being a gigantic problem for him with group projects and teammates who aren’t helping. And a grandparent recently died. I can cut him some slack once for missing my class, but I think he’s missed two or three in a row. And this isn’t the first absence.

I called him in to talk to him about it the other day. “Look, I know you are under a lot of stress, but make it to class. Think of it this way, would you want a letter (of recommendation) writer to say that you were reliable except when you are stressed and busy?” I shouldn’t have said that. I’m not going to put that in a letter, even though I’m annoyed. And even though I am annoyed, this is still a student that I just plain like. I should have poked more into how he was doing first. The poor kid was like a whipped dog for the rest of the day, either from me or from exhaustion.

I felt like such a heel. On the other hand, I really think he should be coming to class.

So lesson one, write it into the honors course contract. No absences except for excused absences or with prior consent of the instructor. I have to go to extra effort for you, you show up to class.

Lesson two, listen first. I already know this one. It is the execution that’s sometimes is lacking.

Lesson three, focus on the positive. I really wish I’d said instead, “I miss you when you don’t come to class.”

Lesson four is just a question for my readers. What should I do now? If I could write a Dear Student letter, what should it say? Oh, heck, here’s a first try. What do you think?

Dear Student,

I called you out for not coming to class the other day. I think I did a bad job of that. I wish I had asked you first what was going on in your life that caused you to miss class. I wish rather than getting on your case, I had told you that I missed you when you don’t come to class. I wish I had written it into the honors course contract so that we both would have agreed to that ahead of time. You looked bad the rest of that day, and I’ve been feeling bad since. I hope you will accept my apology for handling that badly. And I hope you will come to class. I miss you when you aren’t there.

Sincerely,

Dr. Jinx

Functions

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We are learning about linear transformations in linear algebra. These are just functions from one vector space to another that preserve the structure of the vector space. I had students do a team exercise to determine if a number of transformations, such as derivatives, integrals, translation of a vector by a constant vector, multiplication by a matrix are linear transformations.

I get that the linear algebra is new and confusing to students, but I was amazed (I probably shouldn’t have been) by how many found the function definitions to be difficult. After all, we learn about functions in high school. It’s just the linear algebra that’s new and confusing, right? Not quite, as it turns out.

I think this is a case where new knowledge confounds old knowledge. Because we are learning about something new, students lose their ability to keep their mathematical wits about them and apply their old knowledge to the situation. They start to believe that something funky must be going on, and then they try to use the new stuff all over the place. It doesn’t work.

Between my first section and the second, I reinforced the basic function concepts, and it might have helped a little bit. It didn’t help a lot. I know many students got it. I know some didn’t. My hope is that those who have been keeping up with the material might have had a learning curve, but then they learned from their teammates what was going on (or me, when I solved the exercise), and now they know what to do.

I hope I can reinforce the idea that you can go a long way in life if you can keep your mathematical wits about you. Uncommon sense. Apply your uncommon sense. Others call it common sense, but I don’t think it is!

From there to here

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I was asked what journey I took to go from writing software back into a tenure-track appointment.

A short answer would be that I have been very fortunate in my misfortunes; perhaps good at making lemonade out of lemons.

Here is a longer answer, still greatly abbreviated, omitting several years of unhappiness, discouragement and failures, and the unhappiness, discouragement and failures that were interleaved with the successes. I will mention in my first 4 years of teaching, during 3 of which I was not even full-time, I taught 10 different undergraduate courses from freshman to senior level. Starting over new every semester was hell, but it certainly established that you can throw me into a class almost at random, and I will make it a success.

As I found my stride with teaching, I was lucky that one of courses here rejected by the tenure track faculty was mathematical modeling, and inevitably, I got assigned to teach it along with two other new courses that year — as if the one difficult new course wasn’t enough on its own. I took a summer’s worth of anxiety medication trying to figure out what in the hell one would do with that course — projects, obviously, but what and how and … ???? It certainly didn’t help that everyone I talked to told me that this was one of the most difficult courses if not the most difficult course they had ever taught and that they were glad I was teaching it and not them. I figured if I wanted to teach a senior level course, I better be good at this, and I better like it. No pressure! I went to the Course Design Series offered by our Center for Teaching Effectiveness which reminded me to design around what I wanted students to learn. Apparently I had some good ideas.

I also think I just kept getting lucky. I acquired a talented undergraduate and independent thinker in the first iteration of that course, who became my undergraduate research student. He’s an electrical engineer in alternative energy (solar hot water heating), with a double major in mathematics. I was the one encouraging him to continue doing what he was doing, and lo, I became his research mentor. He wrote an undergraduate thesis, won some nice scholarships and awards — we had a great three years together. I will miss him to pieces when he graduates this year.

Through the modeling class, I mentored some smaller undergraduate research projects that could go to Student Research Week, or MathFest, in our undergraduate journal, or to a Writing Center competition. Simply encouraging students to submit their work when I see them doing something interesting makes such a huge difference.

I talked two young women who did interesting projects in my class into presenting at MathFest, and that meant I had to go myself. I talked about the writing I have students do in the modeling course. The session I was in led me to an opportunity write an article on that topic. This has been accepted to the journal PRIMUS. I have plenty more ideas that can go in PRIMUS. I just have to find time to work/write them up.

I never would have guessed how much fun it is to take students to conferences; seeing things through their eyes, taking them somewhere fun for lunch, going to talks with them. Up until that point, I had sometimes hated, sometimes tolerated, but I had never enjoyed a math conference. I overheard my two talking about not understanding a talk, and rather than being intimidated like I would have been, they were peeved that the presenter didn’t define his terms. Conclusion: it was a lousy talk. Go team! I helped teach them that as we learned how to put together presentations.

Ever since going to MathFest, I’ve gotten together with those two several times a semester for lunch. They are now finishing their master’s degrees, one in the Bush School, one in Wildlife in Fisheries.

The professor in Wildlife and Fisheries Science who advises my student had earlier worked with me to design a project for my class since he does a lot of mathematical modeling. This has grown, in turn. He puts me in his grant applications for attracting female mathematically talented students, and he and I are working on a project and getting some more ideas for publications together.

That puts together a track record of successful teaching, mentoring undergraduate research, and miracle of miracles, I was even on track to cobble together a scholarship program for me.

I was also lucky that I befriended the first woman tenured in the Math Department. We started talking because she’s been teaching writing in mathematics classes for years. We have lunch together once a week. Add to that some good/bad luck in that the department has been particularly dysfunctional in my direction this year when my credentials are strong.

She has been the best mentor ever, encouraging me, always happy to look over my materials and make comments and, most importantly, tell me when they were good and that she thought I would be successful. 5 tenure track campus interviews and two offers later, and we conclude she was right about that. I think I would have found the courage to apply on tenure track without her, but her encouragement and ready assistance made certain of it. I will never be able to pay her back, but I sincerely hope I have been paying and will continue to pay it forward to my own students in the future.