Mathematicians Made Visible #5 is John Urschel, a Canadian-American mathematician and a retired professional football player. He played college football at Penn State and was drafted by the Baltimore Ravens in the fifth round of the 2014 NFL Draft. His research fields include numerical linear algebra, graph theory, and data science/machine learning. He is currently a PhD student and mathematics professor at MIT.
Mathematicians Made Visible #4 is Chelsea Walton, an American mathematician who specializes in Non-Commutative Algebra. She was educated in Detroit public schools, and loved counting, patterns, and puzzles from a young age. In her advice to students of mathematics, she recommends cultivating a network of supportive mentors, colleagues, and friends as essential to combating discouragement. She was named a Sloan fellow in 2017, and was the first woman awarded the André Lichnerowicz Prize in Poisson geometry in 2018. She currently researches and teaches at Rice University.
While I was working on this print, I listened to this lecture on Non-Commutative Algebra. I can’t claim to have understood everything, but I still found it very interesting and informative!
On Open Studio Weekend, Vermont Crafts Council members open their studios or galleries to the public. Come to Long River Gallery, meet some of our artists and see them demonstrate their techniques. Make it a day of great food and great art, visit us after a nice brunch at Piecemeal Pies, lunch or dinner at Trailbreak, Tuckerbox, Thyme, or Elixir. Stroll around town and check our new neighbors, Kishka Gallery & Libraryat 83 Gates Street and Tourist, at 89 South Main Street.
when – Saturday June 19th from 10 AM to 6 PM and Sunday June 20th from 10 AM to 4 PM (masks required)
where – 49 South Main Street | White River Junction, VT
follow the signs from I-89 (Exit 11), I-91 (Exit 7), or the intersection or VT Routes 4 (from Quechee) and 5
what –
Artist demonstrations (see lineup below)
Sales on some items
Sweets for the Sweet, free caramels with each purchase over $10, until supplies run out
Free gift wrapping on request
Betsy Derrick, Interactive Pastels Demonstration, Sat 10-1
Painter Betsy Derrick will do an interactive demonstration, sharing information, demonstrating different techniques and material for the pastel medium, and letting visitors use materials themselves. This will include soft, hard, and oil pastels, also different surfaces and tools.
Sharin Luti, Beadwork Demonstration, Sat 2-5
Artist Sharin Luti will demonstrate two beadwork techniques. Peyote Stitch is an off-loom bead weaving technique from ancient Egypt and indigenous communities that Sharin uses for bracelets and necklaces. Netting Stitch creates a very loose, flexible beaded fabric, which she uses to create beaded scarves.
Block printing is a very accessible medium: beginners and experts, artists and non-artists alike can find satisfaction in it because the prints can be both very controlled yet also contain spontaneous quirks that add to their beauty. In this demonstration Tracy will show the entire process: print design, carving the block, printing, and coloring with watercolors.
Moon Duchin: Geometry, Topology, and Dynamical Systems
Mathematicians Made Visible portrait #3 is Moon Duchin, currently a mathematician and professor at Tufts University with areas of expertise in geometry, topology, and dynamical systems. She also works and lectures on science, technology, and society. In 2016 she founded the MGGG Redistricting Lab to research data science interventions for civil rights.
(A new printmaking project to make sure our visual representations of mathematicians more closely match the reality of the people doing mathematics).
One of my favorite paintings is Rafael’s The School of Athens.
Is it my imagination, or do all these scholars look the same?
I have a copy of it in my classroom to remind me and my students that by studying Algebra, they are part of a community of scholars. But lately that community is seeming a little . . . homogenous. As in, male, white, and dead.
I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to update this painting, make it look more like the world we actually live in? Fill that school with mathematicians with a broader diversity of racial and gender identities. If I were repainting it, who would I put in?
Mathematicians Made Visible is my attempt to figure that out, and to address the need for more diversity in the visual representation of mathematicians. I’ll be updating the page with sketches and prints. I’d love to know your thoughts and recommendations!
Tracy Gillespie, Whitewashed, block print, watercolor, and glue on canvas, 2020
I created this 4″ by 4″ work for the Morill Mini silent auction benefiting the Justin Morrill Homestead in Strafford, VT. Whle not typical of my work, it feels important to me in this time to use any platform I can to address the current awakening to racial injustice that is happening.
What follows is my artist statement about the piece:
During this time of social and political unrest, I find myself shocked at how ignorant I have been of the lived reality of my black neighbors and friends, and at how easy it has been for me to be this ignorant. I’m shocked and ashamed at my misperceptions and profound ignorance of the history of our country, and it makes me wonder about the history of our region: what else am I willfully ignoring?
Most images of summer in Vermont evoke an idyllic country landscape. I wonder: what history are we not seeing when we look at these images? To address this theme, I created a print of a barn on a hillside casting a shadow of an American flag over the field. The flag is concealing a history of black Americans in Vermont, the people whose stories I have never heard. The flag is unraveling to reveal the parts of our human story that are refusing to remain hidden, ignored and overlooked.
Students all over my school are striking for climate action and I’m not sure what to do. I definitely support their actions, but I also think that learning Algebra is critical to understanding our climate crisis.
I created a lesson on changes in the rate of global petroleum consumption over time as a way to introduce them to the wonders of the online graphing software Desmos (and as a way to educate them on our consumption rates.)
Global Petroleum Consumption Rate (in Millions of Gallons per Day) Over Time
I got all of the data online from the U.S. Energy Information Administration website here.
The green dots are the data. The green line is a linear regression (using a line to model the data.) The blue line is an exponential regression (using an exponential curve to model the data.) There are quite a few great questions this graph can generate about the data and the lines that potentially model our future behavior.
I’m still not sure whether I’ll run this lesson today (when many of my students may be striking) or next week when I’m guaranteed a full captive audience. The good/bad news is that the climate crisis is not going to be a quick fix, so I’ll have many future opportunities for this education.
One of my favorite Fall traditions is to work as Osborne the Printer at the Tunbridge World’s Fair. I’ve been attending the fair nearly 20 years and just recently found my calling up on Antique Hill working in the print shop. Even though it’s not typically something you’d print with a letterpress, I created a commemorative block print that will be available for print enthusiasts. I’ll be working there Saturday night, but the print shop is open 10-5 every day of the fair. See you there!
1. Learn
some math yourself. You can make learning part of your family
culture by showing that everyone in your family is learning something
new. This doesn’t mean lecturing your kids on the virtues of
lifelong learning—it means modeling it yourself. There are lots of
free online resources (try edX, or Khan Academy) for learning (or
re-learning) mathematics. In addition to becoming more knowledgeable,
you will also grow in compassion for their struggles. As adults it’s
easy to forget how vulnerable it is to be completely clueless (and
possibly not perfect at something the first time around.) Putting
ourselves in the place of the student goes a long way in helping us
understand our child’s experience.
2. Connect
with their math teacher. Most schools have open houses or parent
information nights where parents can come and meet teachers. Show up
to these events and it will make a difference to your child and their
teacher. As a teacher, meeting a parent signals to me that my student
has a supportive home environment, and it’s helpful to get a fuller
picture of their lives outside of the classroom. Establishing a
relationship also makes it easier to reach out if there are questions
or concerns later in the year.
3. Make
sure they have clean, quiet place to work with the supplies they
need. Many of the students who struggle in my classes are highly
distractable, and environmental cues are helpful for signaling that
it’s time to focus and get to work. Most teachers provide a list of
supplies at the beginning of the year. It’s a good bet that for
math class they will need pencils, erasers, paper, and a ruler. Other
possibilities include a scientific calculator, and graph paper. Be
sure to check in every couple of months to see if they need refills.
4. Show
them real math at work in everyday life. To stay motivated, your
child will need come up with their own reasons why it’s important
to study math (and these are likely to change over the years.) We
work on this some in the classroom, but it’s extra effective if it
also comes from home. Statistics in news articles, measurement in
building and cooking, probability in decision-making are just a few
of the different kinds of mathematics in the world around us.
Practice looking and you’ll see more and more.
5. Offer
encouragement to build perseverance. Everybody struggles in math
at some point in their lives. Yet we seem to have this idea that,
“Either I’m a math person or I’m not.” The reality is that
there are a lot of different kinds of mathematics, and a lot of ways
to be good at math. Struggling with math one day does not mean that
you won’t find satisfaction or even joy in it later. Seeing
mistakes as an opportunity for growth is a mindset that will help
your child in math class and beyond.
After nearly a year of creative hiatus, I am excited to share the first images of my new project.
Since last August I have been focusing on improving my craft as a middle and high school Algebra teacher. I am inspired by my students to create a new series of prints weaving together math, art, and history.
The images above are illustrations of the Greek method for approximating the circumference of a circle by inscribing a series of polygons with ever increasing number of sides. The more sides a polygon has, the closer its perimeter is to the circumference of the circle. Ancient Greek mathematicians worked on calculating perimeters of polygons with more and more sides in an attempt to arrive at a definitive whole number ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter (or pi.)
The top image above is a circumscribed and an inscribed polygon (representing upper and lower bounds for calculating pi.) The lower image is an inscribed triangle and hexagon (a nod to Eudoxus’ “method of exhaustion.”)
These two mini prints are just me getting my feet wet–I’m also working on a larger print that I’ll share more about later . . .
