Essays

Although I’m proudest of my books, I have occasionally written things that do not retail for $27.99. In fact, they’re probably the best place to start with my work.

Here are some of my favorite essays on education and learning:

• What It Feels Like to Be Bad at Math (later reposted at Slate)
• The Math Ceiling: Where’s Your Cognitive Breaking Point? (later adapted for Math Horizons)
• The State of Being Stuck
• Why I’ve Stopped Doing Interviews for Yale (later adapted for The Los Angeles Times)
• When Memorization Gets in the Way of Learning (The Atlantic)
• How I Became an Unfair Teacher (The Atlantic)
• The Thesaurus of Failure (Slate)
• Getting the Joke — And the Math (CM)
• Against Mathematical Proof

But let’s be honest, people like my funnier stuff better. Here are some of my more popular silly posts:

• Headlines from a Mathematically Literate World (reposted at Huffington Post)
• Why Not to Trust Statistics (later featured in Math with Bad Drawings)
• Math Experts Split the Check (reprinted in Math Horizons)
• What Does Probability Mean in Your Profession? (later featured in Math with Bad Drawings)
• How to Tell a Mathematician You Love Them
• Literature’s Greatest Opening Lines, as Written by Mathematicians
• A Mathematician’s New Year’s Resolutions