Jamie S. Pyper

The more I learn the more I realize there is so much more to learn. And I really appreciate that everything I read can have an impact, provide some insight, and give explanation to my personal and professional life. I learned, from reading “Complexity: The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos” by M. M. Waldrop, that I never know where I will learn something that gives an ‘aha’ moment. And often that ‘aha’ moment emerges because of reading or experiencing something quite different from the problems/thoughts I was wrestling with. I am learning that it is walking on the edge of chaos – one side is chaotic and messy, the other side is static, safe, and relatively unchanging – that I get the most out of life. To mix metaphors, sometimes the pendulum of the walk swings a bit too far into either side, but that regression towards the mean is my goal.

It is not possible to learn everything in mathematics, as it was a few hundred years ago when people could be an architect, artist, inventor, medical doctor, and lawyer, all at the same time. Keith Devlin speaks of all the methods he learned in university math becoming obsolete in his lifetime. Sunil Singh writes math is not a race, and with Chris Brownell says math recess is where we get to have playful learning. Read Paul Lockhart’s “A Mathematician’s Lament”.

Inside this webspace are the things I think about, that I teach, that I learn, and insight into my perceptions of what teaching and leaning mathematics is all about; and how others’ perceptions can be helped to see the mathematics that naturally exists in their lives.

Welcome. And if you find this space interesting, glad to have you stay.