The ancient Greeks argued that the best life was filled with beauty, truth, justice, play and love. The mathematician Francis Su knows just where to find them.
A few hours later Quanta Magazine sat down with Su in a quiet room on a lower level of the hotel and asked him why he feels so moved by the experiences of people who find themselves pushed away from math.
So if you look at some of the studies people are doing now about people who take Calculus 1, and how many of them go on to take Calculus 2, you’ll find basically that we’re losing women and minorities at these critical junctures.
I’m sure some of it has to do with people in these groups not seeing themselves as belonging in math, possibly because of a negative culture and an unwelcome climate, or because of things that professors or other students are doing to discourage people from continuing.
The goal of broadly getting people to appreciate math is not at odds with bringing more people into deep mathematics.
Connect with people in a deep way and you’re going to draw more people into mathematics.
If you address some of these deep themes you’re going to get more people and a more diverse set of people in deep mathematics.
Of course we don’t have any data, but I’ve certainly talked to enough people who’ve had those kinds of experiences to know that it’s very frequent and most of those people are women and minorities.
Source: Math and the Best Life
Originally published at Cogly.
