More than just mathematics and statistics students gathered to see speaker Ben Orlin on Nov. 19 and 20. Orlin, an author, teacher and blogger, was the selected speaker this year for the mathematics and statistics department’s annual distinguished lecturer series. His four published books are known for their jokes, drawings and math.
After obtaining his bachelor’s degree in math and psychology and then a master’s in data analytics, he taught middle and high school math. While teaching, he started his blog, “Math with Bad Drawings,” where he combined his love for teaching, math and writing. His first book, also titled “Math with Bad Drawings,” was released in 2018 and began his career in the book industry.
He was set to give three lectures during his time at Winona State University. The first was held on the night of Nov. 19 and was open to the public. “The State of Being Stuck” was the first topic he ventured during his time in Winona.
He began by delving into the history of Fermat’s Last Theorem, a math problem over 350 years old that was only proved in 1994 by Andrew Wiles. Wiles spent seven years working on the theorem.
Orlin was invited to a conference in Heidelberg, Germany where many distinguished mathematicians were set to hold talks. Orlin was invited to write about the conference on his blog, which led him to be in the same room as Wiles. He had the opportunity to ask Wiles a question, which he had trouble coming up with as someone who was currently teaching middle school math.
“What do you tell people when you’re talking to a broader public?” Orlin had asked about speaking to non-mathematicians. “What he said was this. What mathematicians can do and what everyone else can learn from us is just accepting the state of being stuck. Getting stuck and not shutting down, not walking away but accepting it. Saying ‘hey I’m stuck now, what do I do?’”
Wiles’ answer inspired Orlin to explore the idea of being stuck and how it can be a good thing. Throughout the lecture, he encouraged the audience to discuss things they get stuck on and how they overcome that. He also shared five strategies on how to get unstuck.
Play around: Try new things, mess around and see what happens. Make mistakes: Making the right mistakes can actually help you get closer to the answer. Make it concrete: If you can take something that’s abstract and give it an example, that’s a great place to start. Stop working: Once you’ve really gotten into a problem, let it go. Take a step back, do something else. Keep working: While it’s important to walk away sometimes, it’s even more important to come back. Keep working, keep exploring and chipping away at the problem.
“Being stuck, it happens to all of us, it happens in math. Being stuck, what does it mean? It means not knowing what to do. It doesn’t mean you’re frozen, it doesn’t mean you can’t do anything. It means you don’t know the right thing to do, so loosen your idea of what the right thing to do means. The right thing to do know means to explore and make mistakes, not to get the answer right this second,” Orlin said.
He also hosted a workshop during a math education class where he brought his latest book he’s working on. The topic of his fifth book is all about puzzles.
During the workshop students got the chance to give Orlin feedback on his puzzles. They also got to explore the idea of ‘how do I teach math to my students?’ and ‘how can I help them when they get stuck?’ Orlin was there to help answer these questions and emphasize that feedback is a useful tool in teaching.
Eric Errthurm, a professor in the mathematics and statistics department, helped coordinate the event and chose Orlin as the selected speaker.
“He’s kind of still in the writing phase of the puzzles but he’s working on, like, how do you introduce them to people? How do you get them to interact with it? What are good examples? What are bad examples? So this morning was really nice. It was a good fit, sort of we were doing him a favor and he was doing us a favor,” Errthurm said.
His third lecture was on the symbiotic relationship between math and science. He explored the relationship and the histories behind the two. They’ve grown together but still remain separate.
While this year the speaker series was focused on math and teaching, it appealed to a wide range of people. When planning these speakers, the organizers keep in mind that it’s important for the speakers to be good communicators, not just good mathematicians.
“We want our speaker to appeal to a variety of audiences. We want somebody that has that ability to talk to, not just mathematicians but people in the broader community. So Ben fit that criterion because his job is communicating mathematics to a broader audience,” Errthurm said.
This distinguished speaker series has been happening since 1996 when Joyati Debnath, another professor in the mathematics and statistics department, wanted to give students another perspective. She had the task of selecting the speaker every year until it was handed off to the rest of the department pre-COVID-19. Now every year, one of the different subgroups in the department, math, math education, statistics and data science, pick the speaker.
This year it was the math departments turn, which is how Orlin came to Winona State.
“I think a lot of times students when they’re in a math class, it’s homework and then you get new stuff every day and you just get beat down. The idea is that these speakers are supposed to come in and just be like, hey, let’s look at the big picture,” Errthurm said.
With AI now it is easier than ever to type a question and immediately get an answer. There is something to be said of sitting with a problem and get stuck. Orlin made the idea of getting stuck sound fun and like an adventure of it’s own.
Next year it will be statistics and data sciences turn to pick a speaker, which will likely broaden students perspectives just the same as Orlin did this year at Winona State.
