Reading Time: 1 Min.
I feel for my students when I hand them their first essay assignment. Many are mathematicians, students, and teachers who chose to study mathematics partly to avoid writing. But in my mathematics education courses, and the discipline more generally, academic writing is part of our routine practice. Mathematicians face some challenging stereotypes when it comes to writing. Writing is seen as ephemeral, subjective, and context-dependent, whereas mathematics is seen as enduring, universal, and context-free. Writing reflects self, but mathematics transcends it: they are distinct from each other. This is a false dichotomy that can discourage mathematicians from writing. It suggests writing is outside the natural skill set of the mathematician, and that one’s mathematics training not only neglects one’s development as a writer but actively prevents it. Rather than capitulate to this false dichotomy, I propose we turn it around to examine how writing is similar to three specific mathematical practices: modeling, problem-solving, and proving. Three mathematical practices that can improve your writing Mathematical modeling Let us consider a hypothetical mathematics education student who has spent weeks thinking, reading, and talking about her essay topic, but only starts writing it the night before it is due. She writes one draft only – the one she hands in – and is disappointed with the low grade her essay receives. She wishes she had started earlier but she was still trying to figure out what she wanted to say up until the moment she started writing. It was only the pressure of the deadline that forced her to start; without it, she would have spent even more time thinking and reading to develop her ideas. After all, she reasons, there is no point writing when you do not know what to write about! This “think first, write after” approach, sometimes known as the “writing up” model is a dangerous trap many students fall into, and is at odds with the way writing works. The approach allows no room for imperfect drafts that are a necessary part of the writing process. Writing experts […]
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Reading Time: 1 Min. Cover illustration for “The Frindle Files.”Credit…Brian Selznick There’s a moment in early childhood when pure, wide-eyed
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