Teaching

In Fall 2022, I'm on research leave

In Fall 2021, I taught:

Math 136: Calculus 2

Math 243: Mathematical Structures

In Spring 2021, I taught:

Math 135: Calculus 1

Math 392: Geometric Group Theory

In Fall 2020, I taught Math 135: Calculus 1 and

Math 301: Hyperbolic Geometry

All information is posted to Canvas

The Mathematicians Project

I recommend reading/skimming the free book "Living Proof: Stories of Resilience along the Mathematical Journey" for stories of the struggles we, as individual mathematicians, may or do face.

I also taught courses at Georgia Tech from 2012-2014, Wittenberg 2014-2015, and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 2015-2018

The following thoughts are more about learning and less about teaching. But the two go hand in hand.

A growth mindset is one that views intelligence, and in our case, math ability comes through training, practice, challenge, and perseverance. A nice summary of a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset is here. Here are my slides from my talk about Growth mindset. See Carol Dweck's Ted Talk.

You probably already have a growth mindset in some areas of life: if you play sports, you surely believe that you can improve, that you can accomplish new feats through intense training. If you are a musician, you probably work towards a goal of playing a challenging new piece, and you know you have to practice to get there. If you play board or card games, you learn that you better understand nuanced strategy as you play more and play more challenging games against tougher competition.

And by the way, the key here is that in order to improve, you don't repeatedly do what is easy for you and expect to get better. You don't only practice your scales and expect that you will master a new piece. You run sprints until your muscles are shaking or lift weights until you are at your edge. You must challenge yourself in order to improve.

By the way, I am not minimizing the basics. You need to practice your scales, run your drills, and think through the consequences of possible moves. Likewise, in math, you need to do exercises that practice the concepts you are learning. But once taking a limit is no longer challenging, practicing every limit in the book will not be enough to master differentiation.