A friend and colleague recently suggested (thanks, Sanza!) writing a meta-post about creating a Math Blog, and I thought now might be a good time. It’s been about four months since my first post, and I’ve found my stride (metaphorically, at least).
What motivated me to write a blog? I realized I’d written a lot over the years in the form of puzzles and problems that I wanted to share. But I had trouble thinking of a good venue — except perhaps writing a book — and it suddenly dawned on me that a blog might be the way to go.
As I mused upon the idea further, I began thinking about my artwork as well, and wanting to share a lot of those ideas, too. I wanted the blog to be accessible — which doesn’t mean devoid of some interesting mathematics — as well as fairly novel. There are good blogs which cull stuff from all over the internet, but I didn’t want to write one of those. I thought that a creativity thread would be just what I wanted — to show mathematics as a creative endeavor. And having taught for many years, I realized that this was one aspect of mathematics lost on most students at any level. (As discussed in two recent posts.)
And so a blog was born. Or conceived, I should say. I settled on an audience of advanced middle school students to undergrads — but I was aiming at a fairly sophisticated student. One who isn’t afraid of mathematics or programming, and is willing to dive into something new.
Now I’ve written a lot over the past several years, including a few books, so I thought that the writing would be fairly manageable. But knowing that projects are often more involved than originally imagined, I decided to draft my first ten blog posts and get some feedback before I even started. This was in August, before the semester began, and I thought it a prudent move so I didn’t get stuck in a content bind right away.
That work definitely paid off — and it made me think a lot about what I wanted to write before I launched the blog. I wanted a nice blend of art, puzzles, teaching ideas, and geometry; drafting some initial posts helped me to organize those thoughts.
I decided early on to incorporate programming, for a few reasons. I would have to say that the computer is perhaps the most important tools I use as a mathematician. I think nothing of writing a Mathematica routine to test out a conjecture say, a million times, before I dive into looking for a proof. And as an artist, well, the blog speaks amply to that point.
But I had just started learning Python in January of this year for a course I was teaching, and using it on the Sage platform. I felt it was important that anything I did with programming should be accessible and open source, and Sage fit the bill perfectly — just click on the link! Nothing to download or install.
But more importantly, I wanted to use programming to help illustrate the creative process — and encourage others to be similarly creative. Making a puzzle, designing some artwork — not mysterious endeavors, but realizable projects made easier with the help of a few lines of code.
At that point, I had the basic setup in mind, and went for the first post! You might have noticed (those of you following from the beginning), that the “Read More” sections have disappeared. I originally thought to divide the content into two sections, so the reader might digest it in smaller chunks.
But with the help of the statistics gathered by WordPress, I noticed the following phenomenon. When I began making movies and included one in the main body and one in the “Read More” section, the latter was hardly ever played. So the chunking plan seemed only to succeed in having readers look at only half of my posts…..
So at that point, I decided to eliminate the “Read More” sections — and therefore also the idea of including a puzzle at the end of each essay for those who weren’t particularly interested in such things. They’d have to endure….
I settled, then, upon writing one-section posts of about 1000 words. This is long enough to say something interesting, but not too long to lose a dedicated reader.
I’ve received some good feedback so far, but the readership is still fairly small. Now that I’m accumulating enough content, one of my next steps is to reach out to some colleagues and perhaps former students to help me publicize my blog. More and more schools are teaching Python, and I think some of my posts on art and programming would make interesting projects for students taking an introductory programming course.
I’d also like to do some guest blogging — having other friends and colleagues describe their creative processes. I haven’t decided exactly what form that will take yet, but that doesn’t need to be decided immediately.
One neat side effect is that I’ve got to meet some interesting people online through their comments, and not all are from the US. I’m surprised by the geographic diversity of viewers — it’s fascinating how the internet transcends national boundaries. I’m hoping to meet more people as the blog evolves.
Is it worth it? So far, I’d say yes. I’ve had many interesting conversations as a result of blog posts, and I enjoy putting my thoughts down on paper (metaphorically, that is). Aside from the time invested (which is not insignificant), the only other cost involved was upgrading WordPress so there wouldn’t be any ads on my blog — I was quite surprised when I test posted and was informed that there might be ads!
For the would-be blogger, then, no good advice — a blog is a very personal endeavor, and sometimes you’ve just got to jump in and give it a go. But this is my story — and I’m sticking to it! Good luck if you’re willing to give it a try.
Word count is now 1,011, meaning it’s time to go. You get pretty good after a while at putting your thoughts into 1000-word chunks….
Creativity in Mathematics 