Brendan W. Sullivan
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professorbrendan.bsky.social
Brendan W. Sullivan
@professorbrendan.bsky.social
610 followers 260 following 140 posts
Asst. Prof. of Mathematics, Emmanuel College (Boston, MA)
🔗🌲: https://linktr.ee/professorbrendan
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professorbrendan.bsky.social
I'm at this webinar right now about #RCV and Santa Claus just entered the chat !?!?
August 13, 2025 at 6:28 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
Great point about product vs. process in this book review on AI in education:

"Learning requires critical engagement with productive failure," but "learners often mistake our intentions because education systems and our culture put so much emphasis on grades"

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Despite the diversity of AI tools, their emergence into higher education reinforces the importance of process over product in learning and teaching. Few academics would say that our courses are fundamentally about exams, reports, and essays: we intend these products to be proxies for demonstrating an evolving process of learning. However, our learners often mistake our intentions because education systems and our culture put so much emphasis on grades and grading (Forsyth, Citation2022). The rise of AI provides a distinct opportunity for educators and institutions to explicitly make the case that learning requires critical engagement with productive failure; students cannot develop deep knowledge, skill, and judgment without struggle guided and supported by disciplinary and pedagogical experts. AI tools have the potential to augment that human work, if we resist the temptation of the “illusion of learning” by replacing human effort with technological gimmicks.
July 9, 2025 at 5:44 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
Reminds me a lot of Wean Hall at CMU (which people also say resembles a turtle eating a cheeto!)
Wean Hall on Carnegie Mellon University campus. Wide, brutalist, concrete building with windows.
May 29, 2025 at 5:29 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
Great suggestions here for math instructors at all levels:

1. Meet students where they are
2. Show students that instructors authentically care about their learning
3. Provide "interesting, challenging and joyful work to all students"
What should we do instead? This is a question that’s being asked and answered by many local educational institutions – The Algebra Project, the pilot program at Cambridge Street Upper School, Girls’ Angle, the Young People’s Project and Harvard University’s math department, as well by as the city’s Steam Initiative, to name a few, in addition to the Math Circle. What do all these programs have in common? Three things: Meeting the students where they truly are, not where they theoretically should be; showing students that the instructors authentically care about them, to help them through the tough stretches of learning; and providing interesting, challenging and joyful work to all students, regardless of whether they are behind or ahead.
May 5, 2025 at 2:57 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
I remember seeing this somewhere... a quick search turned up this Ted Chiang piece

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
As the linguist Emily M. Bender has noted, teachers don’t ask students to write essays because the world needs more student essays. The point of writing essays is to strengthen students’ critical-thinking skills; in the same way that lifting weights is useful no matter what sport an athlete plays, writing essays develops skills necessary for whatever job a college student will eventually get. Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way.
May 1, 2025 at 10:09 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
According to @fairvote.bsky.social's analysis, Massachusetts ranks very low (#40) in voter turnout and dead last (#50) in closeness of elections because our average margin of victory is 66% points (!)
Massachusetts is ranked #34 for Voter Voice. Rankings on each individual metric: Voter turnout: #40 Margin of victory: #50 Fewest landslides: #35 Voter consensus: #4 Partisan skew: #16 Bar graph. Title: Margin of victory 1st column: ranking 2nd column: state 3rd column: average margin of victory 1st column shows rankings from 41 (West Virginia, 41%) to 50 (Massachusetts, 66%)
April 28, 2025 at 5:24 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
Letter to the editor in today's NY Times advocates for gradeless education! She even links to relevant articles and research, including posts by @jessifer.bsky.social and @alfiekohn.bsky.social

#edusky #ungrading

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/26/o...
I’m being overly simplistic, of course, but so is Mr. Brooks. I would love to have a conversation with him about how students today feel pressured to spend more time pursuing that elusive A+ than perusing their local library. I would love to have a platform half the size of his so I could advocate gradeless education — so I could point to evidence that rating students on a letter scale ruins their passion for reading.
April 26, 2025 at 3:25 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
Today's @newyorker.com crossword features a notable mathematician!

www.newyorker.com/puzzles-and-...

What's your 19-Across number?
Crossword puzzle with highlighted clue: Mathematician Paul known as a prolific collaborator [5 letters]
April 24, 2025 at 5:02 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
They definitely do! I also use an annotation tool for assigned readings so students can comment on the articles; here are some past comments on yours:
April 23, 2025 at 1:48 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
I just realized this tells us something about the decimal expansion of 1/37!

Because 999 is one less than 10^3, there's a repeating pattern of 3 digits, and it's 027
WolframAlpha app. Input 1/37. Decimal approximation 0.027027027... Repeating decimal 0.[027]
April 17, 2025 at 12:24 AM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
it does appear in the title of this statistical analysis of authors' word usage!

(I remember really enjoying the book, would recommend)

www.npr.org/2017/03/31/5...
cover of the book "Nabokov's Favorite Word is Mauve" by Ben Blatt
April 11, 2025 at 2:29 AM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
April 3, 2025 at 2:45 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
Very strange to read about a pirated database of books and articles and find that several of my publications are in there!

www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Looks like MAA journals (from Taylor & Francis) are included. Not sure how my doctoral thesis (never officially published) got in there.
Headline from The Atlantic: The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem Meta pirated millions of books to train its AI. Search through them here. By Alex Reisner Search for an author in LibGen Search query: brendan w sullivan Results: Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Mathematics, Crossword Puzzle: Joint Mathematics Meetings 2016 Mathematics Magazine, What Do You Study? Mathematics Magazine, ...
March 20, 2025 at 2:49 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
I've always enjoyed Kaprekar's constant: 6174

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapreka...

Take any 4 digit number. (Repeat digits allowed, but not all 4 the same.) Write digits in increasing and decreasing order. Subtract them. Iterate. Guaranteed to end up at the fixed point 6174 in 7 or fewer moves!
Kaprekar's routine: In number theory, Kaprekar's routine is an iterative algorithm named after its inventor, Indian mathematician D. R. Kaprekar.[1][2] Each iteration starts with a four digit random number, sorts the digits into descending and ascending order, and calculates the difference between the two new numbers. As an example, starting with the number 8991 in base 10: 9981 – 1899 = 8082 8820 – 0288 = 8532 8532 – 2358 = 6174 7641 – 1467 = 6174 6174, known as Kaprekar's constant, is a fixed point of this algorithm. Any four-digit number (in base 10) with at least two distinct digits will reach 6174 within seven iterations.[3] The algorithm runs on any natural number in any given number base.
March 14, 2025 at 2:07 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
Happy Valentine's! ❤️ #MathSky #ITeachMath

I'll be sharing this poem with my calculus students, discussing all the mathematical terms used throughout and the imagery they evoke (e.g. "roots"):

Remennik, A. Calculus: A Love Sonnet. Math Intelligencer 45, 319 (2023). doi.org/10.1007/s002...
Love does not monotonically increase, Nor oscillate in neatly ordered peaks. Love has no asymptote. It brings no peace To one who finds, and less to one who seeks. Ah, Love – it has no value of its own. Like shallow roots unanchored in the ground That wilt, though necessary, love alone Is not sufficient, as so many found. Love builds, like area below a curve, And, slice by tiny slice, transmutes and grows. However wildly the path may swerve, We, like converging sequences, draw close. Without an algorithm, or map, or chart, We integrate into each other’s heart.
February 14, 2025 at 3:07 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
Yes! Reminds me of the best, most insightful comment I got on this question about the same issue, with students overgeneralizing the distributive property

matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/92...
Comment reply to a stack exchange post: Linearity/distributivity, when first introduced, may appear to be a property of brackets, rather than a property of multiplication, because the multiplication sign is suppressed. This doesn't cover all cases obviously, but this is an explanation I've gotten for attempts at (x+y)^(1/2) or sin(a+b) from various students. "Can't you just do that when there are brackets?" Nope, and this should be strongly emphasized early on. – Robert Mastragostino Commented Mar 30, 2014 at 7:22
January 29, 2025 at 1:14 AM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
This guy is both my birthday twin and my academic great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather!
January 13, 2025 at 3:17 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
Forgot to mention I'm even wearing my #BandcampFriday shirt today!

You can get one here: store.bandcamp.com/merch/bandca...
December 6, 2024 at 8:56 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
These books have a few lessons/projects involving modeling. I'll bring them down the hall for you to borrow 😊
"Mathematics for Social Justice: Resources for the College Classroom" and "Mathematics for Social Justice: Focusing on Quantitative Reasoning and Statistics" and "High School Mathematics Lessons to Explore, Understand, and Respond to Social Injustice"
November 25, 2024 at 3:10 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
Not sharing this to comment on the article itself, just intrigued by the writing on the blackboard in this cover image! www.nytimes.com/2024/09/03/o...

Looks like they're figuring out the convergent value of sqrt(2+sqrt(2+sqrt(2+....
September 3, 2024 at 1:28 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
Just got this in the mail for some important reading before classes start!
Coffee cup with a book, entitled "Failing Our Future: How Grades Harm Students and What We Can Do About It," by Joshua R. Eyler
September 1, 2024 at 4:50 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
I'm presenting at 1:15pm this afternoon at #JMM2024 in Room 062:

"Suggestions for teaching voting methods in a general education mathematics course"

meetings.ams.org/math/jmm2024...
January 5, 2024 at 6:54 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
Stop by the exhibition hall @JointMath on Thursday morning. I'll be at booth #709 with @619Wreath from 10am to 11am! #JMM2024
January 3, 2024 at 7:33 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
Last night I went to SOLSTICE, an outdoor light & sound installation at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.

One display recreated an eclipse with this light source shining from behind a circle.

What do you think the shape of that shadow on the ground is? #MathIsEverywhere #MTBoS
December 13, 2023 at 7:22 PM
professorbrendan.bsky.social
This is becoming more like "puzzle of the month" than week... but here's another crossword for you to try!

amuselabs.com/pmm/crosswor...

Solve for the two longest theme entries, then use them to answer a meta question
December 5, 2023 at 5:26 PM