Math Geek Mom: Advice For Younger Scholars

By Rosemarie Emanuele. As the semester begins to wind down, I come to the end of teaching a semester of Calculus II. This is the semester of Calculus that sometimes gives the subject a bad name. Included in it are such things as revolving a function around a line that may or may not be the x or y axis, substituting in for trigonometric functions using special trigonometric identities, and a technique known as “integration by parts,” in which a difficult integral is decomposed into an equation including an integral that is much easier to solve. As we plod through these topics, I often find myself giving my students advice on how they might go about the often “creative” process of making the required substitutions. As one student told me “I see what you are doing, but I don’t know if I would think to do that myself.” I found myself thinking of this coaching when I read an essay in TIME this past week about advice that is given to young women just starting their careers. Read more...