How I Found a Home for Wayward Mathematicians
By Kate Ertmann [Kate's Threads, Instagram, Facebook and BlueSky]
It really sucks when you feel like you don’t have a community that you can share the greatest (non-human-associated) love of your life with.
But if that love is true, you find a proxy to fill that absence of camaraderie. You (I) might pick up a few books about this love. You (I) might write down a few personal thoughts that float out of those words in those books. You (I) might even see some opportunities where you could incorporate those thoughts into your everyday life - at work, at home, when you’re just going about living your best life.
For decades, I lived my life with mathematics being that thing I did on the side; I’d read, I’d write, I’d thread mathematical concepts into my work and at home, all while I did my darndest to live my best life. I embraced math as this really rad universal language, utilizing the logic it could bring to moments of ideation or decision-making or even creative design.
And then! Through a series of just going with the flow moments - the kind that tend to happen when navigating L I F E during a global pandemic - I found MAA.
Though I never took a formal math class after Trig, nor am I a math educator employed by any sort of institution, I sent in an abstract to speak at MAA MathFest 2023. At this point, I was writing #mathIRL essays and posting them on my blog. To my great joy, not only was my session accepted but I also learned there’s a whole existing category where my flavor of math lives: Mathematical Experiences and Projects in Business, Industry, and Government (BIG). I had no idea.
I can’t lie (no, really, I can’t. I’m very expressive. I will never sit at a poker table), and I have to fess up that I was incredibly nervous to be around Real Mathematicians. I considered myself to just be a nerdy voracious ingester of all things math. August crept up on me, I went to Tampa, and whaddya know, I found myself in conversations with some very fine folks - and they took me in. They nerded out with me. They drank wine with me.
Together, we learned about the variety of ways that folks lived their math - yes, in the classroom, but also weaving it into music, unearthing its legacy in general history, amplifying its significance in maintaining our democracy. I had finally found my math peeps and they are lovelier than I could have ever imagined.
And then. AND! THEN! Just a few months later, I was asked if I’d be interested in joining the editorial board of MAA’s Math Values. My initial gut reaction was, I don’t have the bandwidth. Second reaction was, sh!t, does she (Kira Hamman, the incoming editor) know that I’m not an accredited mathematician? Then my third and final reaction came tumbling in, decimating those prior reactions because all of a sudden I saw the opportunity that was being presented to me.
I got a bit excited when I realized that joining the editorial board of Math Values could be my way to reach out and support those MAA members who’d be willing to share how they utilize their math knowledge in their day-to-day lives, outside the classroom. Oh hi there, would that be you - YES YOU, the one reading this really quickly on your screen before you go do that thing that you have to go do right now? Hi there, I’d love it if you’d reach out and share that quick thought that just popped into your head, that memory of when you had a #mathIRL experience. It can just be a sentence or two (for now). C’mon, tell me tell me tell me, please!
Then I got really stoked when I thought of those other (not categorically mathy) folks in my life, the ones who have told me many a quip and many a tale about reaching into their own math’tastic toolbox to elevate something that they were working on, or building, or fixing, or creating, etc etc. Most of the time, that toolbox was something that they had completely forgotten they even owned, where the tool materialized purely from some instinct within them, right when they needed it. Whether they’d consider themself a wayward mathematician or not, I want them to write about their #mathIRL experiences, too.
So, inline with the actual values of Math Values - Community, Inclusivity, Communication, Teaching & Learning - I’m friggin’ excited to introduce Definitely Integral, a series of personal stories where math has shown up unexpectedly - but purposefully - at work, in art, in music, in literature - in life! The significant mathematical knowledge may not necessarily be a requirement for their task at hand, but that mathematical knowledge has served as a tool for greater success in that moment. This is a place where all of us - math-inclined or math-unrefined, choose your moniker - can share where math showed up for us, those moments that prove that math really is everywhere and in everything.
I’m looking forward to hearing about all those pockets of math-based logic that just sorta exist in different folks’ lives. Places where they’re intuitively inclined to turn to as a resource for a problem they need to solve, a decision they want to make, or even an argument that they want to close the book on - once and for all.
So watch this space! Definitely Integral launches later this month, and my hope is that each of us will unexpectedly learn something new when reading a story in the Definitely Integral stream; not necessarily something new about math itself, but something new about the way that our neighbor improves what they are creating (and they happened to use mathematics, in some way, to make it happen).
Kate Ertmann is a math researcher, writer, & speaker, a recovering entrepreneur, and a former Organizational Designer. She helps math make sense in the real world while celebrating and honoring the work of the academics. You can find her at Kate Loves Math*