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Any tips or anecdotes for us (well, me) about the fun things you'd do with students to encourage that joy? I am not a PhD, but have done a fair bit of tutoring

Any tips or anecdotes for us (well, me) about the fun things you'd do with students to encourage that joy? I am not a PhD, but have done a fair bit of tutoring young people in maths. I feel similarly to you there, and am always on the lookout for new ways to foster that feeling of mathematics being fun and wonderful. It can be hard. The feeling a lot of young people pick up - of maths being roughly akin to pointless abject suffering - is so strongly rooted in young people sometimes, and can be strongly connected to feelings of inadequacy and shame and so on.

sourcepluck 2y ago
Wrote that reply then clicked on your page to see if there were a blog or anything where you elaborate already on these topics - I've already read a couple of articles from your substack! Oops, hah, I did not realise I was writing to the person behind that. I'd filed it away in my head as something to sink more time into when I've the emotional space to do so, but essentially I find it quite courageous to go against the grain in a world where it's perhaps harder and harder to do so. Everyone has a hot take, of course, but the hot takes are usually very much within the bounds of acceptable discourse. Anyway, more power to you, in your endeavours.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  Thank you very much.
vouaobrasil 2y ago
Well, I think they key is I try and select topics that I find very fun, even they are a little off the beaten path. I know there's pressure to teach the curriculum, but honestly there are some cool things you can do with students if there's extra time that might get them hooked even if it's not in the curriculum, like: 1. Coloring maps (four color theorem) 2. Drawing curves and then looking for pathological ones (quadratic equations ...but more of an exploratory rather than methodological approach) 3. Infinite series (but just discuss some paradoxes people thought of centuries ago...) 4. Triangles on spheres ...if you don't make some of it extremely rigorous, there's a lot of basic facets of these things like the drawing aspect that can be quite fun. And TBH it makes sense to start there because mathematicians started out exploring these topics just with random calculations and doodles rather than rigorous proofs.

sourcepluck 2y ago

Wrote that reply then clicked on your page to see if there were a blog or anything where you elaborate already on these topics - I've already read a couple of articles from your substack! Oops, hah, I did not realise I was writing to the person behind that. I'd filed it away in my head as something to sink more time into when I've the emotional space to do so, but essentially I find it quite courageous to go against the grain in a world where it's perhaps harder and harder to do so. Everyone has a hot take, of course, but the hot takes are usually very much within the bounds of acceptable discourse. Anyway, more power to you, in your endeavours.

vouaobrasil 2y ago
Thank you very much.

vouaobrasil 2y ago

Well, I think they key is I try and select topics that I find very fun, even they are a little off the beaten path. I know there's pressure to teach the curriculum, but honestly there are some cool things you can do with students if there's extra time that might get them hooked even if it's not in the curriculum, like: 1. Coloring maps (four color theorem) 2. Drawing curves and then looking for pathological ones (quadratic equations ...but more of an exploratory rather than methodological approach) 3. Infinite series (but just discuss some paradoxes people thought of centuries ago...) 4. Triangles on spheres ...if you don't make some of it extremely rigorous, there's a lot of basic facets of these things like the drawing aspect that can be quite fun. And TBH it makes sense to start there because mathematicians started out exploring these topics just with random calculations and doodles rather than rigorous proofs.