My secret life: keeping the math cover story out of the blog

That's actually a great cover! It definitely would get more of a reaction and get more people to buy/read the issue. However I'm not sure it fits the vision the editors at Business Week want to project for the magazine. Not everyone has the courage or desire to break out, take a chance, and do something that no one expects, however it's in those moments that you put it all out there on the line that define greatness.

I enjoyed your article "Math Will Rock Your World." Are we educating our teachers to support our needs?

I'm concerned that in systems where standardized tests are growing in their domination, teachers' abilities to include wide areas of study in mathematics are diminishing.

While statistics is certainly a topic that may deserve more attention and time in education, mathematical modeling includes a broad range of topics. What are examples of these topics? Optimization as you mentioned is one. Many complicated areas can be simplified to two and three dimensional problems which secondary students would be able to tackle and creatively consider. Its a mathematical stragegy for attacking a problem. To understand what you described in the beginning of your article, one could first consider "a world" in which there are only three topics to build a model of how you locate a persons place from their search. (An excellent source for topics can be found in COMAP's Mathematics Modeling our World series intended for high school students. Another example leading to investigating efficiencies and reliability can be found by googling "reliability theory".)

"We have to train people in business to spot a bogus argument." In mathematics this may be tackled by how we use and teach proof and by how we develop in our students the demand that things make sense. Again this is an area that standardized tests inadequately assess. And so in our increasingly test driven plans, what will be happening to our focus on logical argument? I'm concerned we may be leading students and teachers the wrong way.

Sorry Stephen, the layout...uuuuhhhh, stick to writing ;-)

I just read the article and thought it was great. I emailed it to my husband who teaches high school math and statistics. It's important to show kids that there's more to math than they think. This article is a great way to expose students to careers in math that they probably wouldn't think of on their own.

Stephen,
Excellent post about the conundrum(?) that journalists who blog must go through -- on an increasingly regular basis.

For the most part, journalistic writing differs greatly from the more conversational, at least informal writing most do for blogs. As more and more journalists blog -- someone predicted that journalists will dominate blogs in the future -- will journalistic writing change?

Will the traditional writing readers are used to remain, or change?

It'll be an interesting study to see if and how the reporting styles change by journalists who blog. As you saw, some of your blogging style easily crept into your professional style.

A former journalist, I'm now in public and media relations. However, I'm still a relatively new blogger, so haven't noticed my professional writing change. But, I'll definitely watch myself to see if my blogging tendencies creep into my professional tendencies.

Mike

Math graduates are getting starting salaries in the six-figures?

...man, that's going the hit the engineering departments of our universities hard. Especially those who've been working on/with mathematical models for decades.

Steve-- I'm still unconvinced that the "looser conversational style" is native to blogs. Would this have been so out of place as a New Yorker feature?

Jon,
You're right. There are plenty of outlets in the magazine world for the looser style. I guess I was contrasting my two worlds, the newsweekly and the blog. And the first draft was closer to the blog.

Hello everyone,

I'm writing from Bulgaria, it's very nice to have such ( as businessweek) magazine here in Bulgaria. I think that an article as this is bringing a new hope for those people who attend to study and work as mathematicians as well as economist.

interesting idea but they layout and use of typography are lacking. as a designer please leave the designing to the professionals

quiet good