Math Class: Stories about adventures in math education
The Story Collider
Story Collider, Inc.
4.4 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2020
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week we present two stories from the math classroom.
Part 1: High school math whiz Tori has always hoped a boy would fall in love with her mind, but when it finally happens, she's not sure how she feels.
Part 2: High achieving, but superstitious college student Maryam Zaringhalam’s entire system collapses when she misses a calculus test.
Tori is a high school math teacher in Rockville, Maryland. She spends her days taking derivatives, graphing parabolas, and making young people giggle when she says the word "asymptote." Back when she was a high school student in Rockville, Maryland, Tori's antics on the morning announcements earned her the nickname "Tori with the Story" - a moniker that remains appropriate to this day. Tori has shared stories on stage in DC with Story District, the Moth, and Perfect Liar's Club - and is excited for her Story Collider debut!
Maryam is a molecular biologist who traded in her pipettes for the world of science policy and advocacy. She comes to D.C. from the concrete jungles of New York, where she received her PhD from The Rockefeller University. She co-hosts the science policy podcast Science Soapbox, and her words have appeared in Slate, Scientific American, and Quartz. Her cat is named Tesla, after Nikola and not Elon Musk's car. For insights like this and more, follow her on Twitter @webmz_
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A science story, huh? |
| 0:04.0 | Is NYU scientist the... |
| 0:06.0 | I felt it was right. |
| 0:08.0 | And I just thought, well. |
| 0:10.0 | It was that golden moment. |
| 0:12.0 | Because science was on my side. |
| 0:15.0 | Hello. Hello, everybody. |
| 0:25.8 | Welcome to the Story Collider, where we bring you true personal stories about science. |
| 0:30.1 | I am your host, Aaron Barker, and this week, Liz Neely is still traveling, so I'm joined by our assistant Nissa Greenberg, who helps us out behind the scenes. Say hi, Nissa. Hi, Nissa. That's me. Nissa is a Story Clider's resident math person, |
| 0:45.4 | so I thought it would be appropriate for him to join us for our annual episode in honor of |
| 0:49.5 | Pi Day, which is, of course, the annual celebration of the mathematical constant pie, which is tomorrow, March 14th. |
| 0:56.8 | Nisa, I know you have strong feelings about Pye Day. |
| 0:59.4 | Yeah, I have a lot of resentment towards Pye Day. |
| 1:02.1 | Oh, good. |
| 1:03.2 | Yeah, I had to teach math class, and I just, I mean, that's what I did for a living, was teach math class. |
| 1:09.8 | And I just feel frustrated by all the attention that Pi gets. |
| 1:16.2 | Sure. |
| 1:16.9 | And there's a lot of other cool, irrational numbers out there, and only Pi is getting celebrated. |
| 1:23.4 | And why are we celebrating the three-digit decimal approximation of pie? |
| 1:28.4 | That feels like a random choice. |
| 1:30.0 | Like, why not celebrate Pi Day on the 22nd of July? |
| 1:34.3 | Because 22-7s is actually a much better approximation of Pi than 3.14, you know? |
... |
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