Ben Orlin Journalist Profile

Articles

A sequence of puzzles (about sequences).

Dec 9, 2024 | mathwithbaddrawings.com | Ben Orlin

And, with a big spoiler warning, here are the answers (click the image for a larger version). Like this:Like Loading... Published December 9, 2024December 6, 2024
November 2024 (with bad drawings)

Nov 29, 2024 | mathwithbaddrawings.com | Ben Orlin

Hello, friends, and happy end of November! I spent much of this month traveling (good) and sick (bad). I don’t recommend this combination, just as I don’t recommend the combination of pizza (good) and mulch (bad). It turns out, good + bad often equals bad. Live and learn!1. People of the Equals Sign. Just before the election, of which we shall speak no more, I published an essay on the politics of math.
What’s the use of math history?

Nov 19, 2024 | mathwithbaddrawings.com | Ben Orlin

Welcome, my friends, to another episode of BASAL: Ben’s Amateurish Synthesis of the Academic Literature!On this episode, we’ll examine:How historical mathematicians struggled to conceive of algebraHow historical mathematicians struggled to conceive of probabilityHow learning mathematics is basically a speed-run of those same historical challengesWho cares, and why1.
Proof as a form of literature.

Nov 11, 2024 | mathwithbaddrawings.com | Ben Orlin

Lecture #1:There lives the dearest freshness deep down thingsWelcome, everyone, to Math 190 / Literature 210: Mathematical Proof as Literature. I realize that half of you are here only to fulfill the writing requirement, and the other half, the math requirement. Either way, I hope to cause you a great deal of intellectual discomfort. As you know, I am a scholar of literature, with no more than a high school background in math.
The people of the equals sign: How a messy republic was built on a mathematical abstraction

Nov 3, 2024 | 3quarksdaily.com | Ben Orlin

There is something reassuring about teaching math. On the eve of a pivotal election, as my colleagues in U.S. history grapple with their subject's urgent and terrible relevance, I can console myself that math is rarely urgent, and (as we tend to teach it) almost never relevant. Or so it would seem. But math has a guilty secret: its longstanding role in American statecraft. I'm not referring to math's technocratic applications, or the pious calls for better STEM education.
Key theorems about (learning) calculus.

Oct 15, 2024 | mathwithbaddrawings.com | Ben Orlin

Like this:Like Loading... Published October 15, 2024October 4, 2024
How to teach math when you’re not a math person

Oct 1, 2024 | smartbrief.com | Ben Orlin

5 min read EducationEducational Leadership Moses didn’t want to lead. Cincinnatus didn’t want to fight. And you, if you’re reading this—well, I doubt teaching math reduces you to delighted shrieks. (Other kinds of shrieks, perhaps.)You’re not alone. The US, like other countries, is often left scrambling for math teachers.
A personality quiz for the math-inclined

Sep 19, 2024 | arstechnica.com | Ben Orlin

Math teacher Ben Orlin writes and draws the (aptly named) blog Math With Drawings and is the author of a new book, Math for English Majors: A Human Take on the Universal Language. To mark its publication, he devised this entertaining accompanying quiz. You can read the Ars interview with Orlin here. Math, we like to say, is math. It often seems that mathematics is something beyond our control—something unyielding, universal, inhuman. But is it really? Yes and no.
Advice for teaching a huge online class.

Sep 10, 2024 | mathwithbaddrawings.com | Ben Orlin

A few years back, to make myself eligible for teaching community college and live out my dream of being a side character in Community, I got an online MS. It was pretty good! And pretty strange, after a decade as an educator, to be the educatee once again. Especially strange to do it in this weird online world. I wound up admiring pedagogical moves I expected to dislike, and frustrated with ones I expected to admire.
Humanity’s Strangest Language: On the Joys of Translating Math

Sep 5, 2024 | lithub.com | Ben Orlin

I once asked an auditorium of undergraduates to recall their earliest memories of math. One of them shared a scene so peculiar—and yet so universal—that it burrowed deep into my unconscious, to the point where it has begun to feel like a memory of my own. Article continues after advertisementAt age five, this student was assigned worksheets of addition problems. Trouble was, she didn’t know how to read the funny symbols on the pages, the 2’s and +’s and such. No one had ever taught her.