Math as it Should Be
5/27/202617 min
Aris Winger, Math Professor and Executive Director of the National Association of Mathematicians, has experienced first hand how math can save students' lives by uplifting them. Our education system can move beyond workbooks and help students, all students, think crisper and understand what's happening in the world.
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First 90 secondsCarol Jacoby· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Welcome to The Art of Mathematics. I'm Carol Jacoby, and joining us this time is Aris Winger, who's the associate professor of mathematics at Georgia Gwinnett College, and he's also the executive director of the National Association of Mathematicians. Welcome, Aris.
Aris Winger· Guest0:23
Thank you, Carol. Thank you for having me.
Carol Jacoby· Host0:26
The one thing that interested me is the first part of your bio said, "Mathematics saved my life" Yes And I wanted to talk to you about that. I thought, "Wow, that's impressive."
Aris Winger· Guest0:35
Yeah, I mean, and you know, when I was making the LinkedIn profile, I was looking up, well, how do you do the ones that are most effective so you get the most attention? And I just decided that I just wanted to tell the truth about my experience, right? And you know, math is not something that's necessarily popular, and people have lots of math trauma that we have to deal with. But I definitely felt it was important for me to be truthful enough and bold enough to say the impact it had on me, and to hopefully change some people's minds. There's like, "Oh, math can be life-changing in this way." So for me, in particular, I was always valued in math. And so once teachers back in the day saw that I could multiply fast and I was winning two-digit multiplication battles and stuff like that, then people started to uplift me and be like, "Oh, you're good. You're good. You're good at math because of this," right? But then when I was younger, I lost my parents when I was 9 and 11.