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mathyawp.bsky.social
I post mainly about math, and what it means to be human. Professor, writer, truth & grace seeker. Former MAA president. Opinions my own. Book: Mathematics for Human Flourishing (2020) https://amzn.to/3CLGCA5
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For all of us wanting advice about how to mitigate toxic ash/dust from the fires, this Caltech webinar is really excellent—very informative & practical. One takeaway: dust that they wiped off surfaces on campus had high levels of lead, but wet wipes are effective at cleaning. youtu.be/VBg7wBCoSW8

First day of class. Wasn't ready, honestly. Coming back from two weeks of being in disaster mode---worrying about smoke, house-less friends, son's asthma, air quality, closed schools, toxic ash with lead and asbestos in it---how do I teach math? And yet... /1

Second round of hoping for a commutation for Christopher Jackson. Behind the scenes over the holidays we had a big push to get his case noticed by the right folks, with major help from Karen Saxe in the AMS Office in Washington DC, and Paul Boyer. Not sure if it will be enough, but hoping.

I left #JMM2025 early to take care of fire-related stuff. Sorry to miss some of you. Our house in Pasadena is okay but lots to deal with. I’ll leave you with a beautiful piece of math art (by Peter Kagey) that can be found at the exhibit halls.

Two justice oriented panels at #JMM2025 happening Wednesday (I’m moderating one of them): The Mathematics of Mass Incarceration How Can the Mathematical Community Mitigate Bias and Other EDI Issues in Al Unfortunately they’re at the same time but right next to each other.

Let math (and python) help you make art. Mona Lisa with concentric circles. Try your own at: lifeislinear.davidson.edu/circleArt.html

Happy New Year 6^4 + 3^6! Thanks to my nephew, we had a last minute opportunity to view Rose Parade floats from seats right over Colorado Blvd. N4yo gave and received a lot of waves 👋

I love this from Ben Orlin. “Mathematical truth may be black and white, but mathematical thinking is not.” Also that maths class can be both welcoming and challenging. hechingerreport.org/teacher-voic...

HMC professor Francis Su (@mathyawp.bsky.social) has been named a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society. Su's outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication & utilization of mathematics has placed him among a select group who share this title. uqr.to/su-ams.

Mathematics for Human Flourishing is now in Turkish! yayinlar.tubitak.gov.tr/ana-sayfa/14... And if you're looking for other languages that it's appeared in--Spanish, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Romanian, Italian, Japanese, Korean--here are links: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Looking for the list of Biden’s pardons. It’s not yet at the Pardon Attorney website. I helped Christopher Jackson assemble an application for clemency, and I’m hoping he’s on that list, as he would certainly be deserving. His application is still labeled “pending”.

Looking for ideas: what’s a non typical variant of the white elephant gift exchange game?

Because I have lots of other work to do, I decided to use #Mathematica to scan the first 1000000 perfect squares for strings of repeated digits. I broke each sq into same-digit strings, then for each of the digits 1-9 I counted how many strings were strings of (>1 of) that digit. #NoticeAndWonder

My wife’s cranberry pie (with a little help from N4yo). Unfortunately on the car ride over to a gathering, I turned a corner too fast and they sloshed out. But it still tasted just as good. 😆 Happy Thanksgiving!

New paper from my time in Sydney. And cool story about its origin: at SMRI, I bumped into another visitor, Salil, who had been a student in a course I taught way back in grad school! He's now an expert in an area of CS known as differential privacy. After attending one of my talks, Salil realized...

Returned from speaking at the NCCTM conference of North Carolina math teachers. They had these stickers and buttons. Look at their conference theme!

This post is beautiful. (As my children might say, it’s giving @mathyawp.bsky.social vibes.) Highly recommended.

Greetings, blue sky! The air is fresher over here.