Just Starting Out...

I have been thinking about starting a blog for about a year now, and decided it would be best to just jump in. The idea first came to me when a student asked about what kind of math I do. He had some experience with his science teachers doing research, his art teachers producing some beautiful pieces, and his English teachers publishing articles or even books.

But what do Math Teachers DO??

I thought about this a while, then attended a meeting of the Metropolitan Mathematics Club where the speaker was talking about what the graph of a line might look like if the grid were not on a flat surface. I was really intrigued by the possibilities, and spent several days making sketches and trying to prove a couple of ideas I had. Life and teaching intruded however, and I had to leave the wanderings behind.

A few months later, I was rummaging through my bookshelves and came across a book on Game Theory. I remembered that I had wanted to pick this up at one point, but, again, was distracted by other details.

Last week, I attended another MMC meeting at which the speaker talked about Dynamic Systems and ergodicity. I took lots of notes, and revelled in the brain activity. Chores at home the next day left ergodicity in the dust.

Now, the art teachers at my school have taken over several of the display cases to show off some of their own work. I was really blown away when I saw this stuff. I was reminded that even though we are most often identified as teachers, we have degrees in our fields, and know and understand the material we teach at a really deep level. I was again reminded of that question from last year What do math teachers do and decided it was definitely time to "show off" my own art.

Math teachers do MATH!!

So, my purpose is posting to this blog is to demonstrate some of the math I enjoy and want to learn. I am not sure whether to start with non-planar graphs, game theory, or ergodicity, but wherever I start, I look forward to the trip.