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In the viral New York Times essay \To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This", Mandy Len Catron details an experience she and an acquaintance had as they shared responses to psychologist Arthur Aron's thirty-six questions intended to make participants fall in love. She notes that \we all have a narrative of ourselves that we over up to strangers and acquaintances, but Dr. Aron's questions make it impossible to rely on that narrative". In this paper, we claim that we also have narratives of our relationship to mathematics that we over up to ourselves and others. Following, we over a mathematical version on Aron's thirty-six questions, designed to break out of our personal mathematical narratives and foster intimacy with mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a young mathematician faces the prospect of a date, all kinds of mathe- matics ensue. Here we explore her innovative way to keep the conversation going through rolling dice to decide which conversation starter to utilize. In the course of our exploration, we solve an interesting generating function problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For almost three years, I have spent most of my Sunday afternoons doing math with my daughters and a group of their school friends. Below I detail why and how the math club is run. Unlike my day job, which is full of (statistical) learning objectives for my college students, my math club has only the objective that the kids I work with learn to associate mathematics with having fun. My math club has its challenges, but the motivation comes from love of mathematics, which makes it fun, and worth every minute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popularization of mathematics plays a significant role in drawing more \friends of mathematics" from the public, which is important for the healthy and pro- sperous development of the discipline. The issue of a suitable balance between entertainment and learning is constantly on the minds of those who put evort into this task. This article discusses this issue in the context of mathematical museums and describes a simple problem involving seven light bulbs to illustrate its main points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnomathematical techniques and modelling tools allow us to examine systems taken from the real world and offer us insight into forms of mathematics performed in holistic contexts [3]. A pedagogical approach that connects a diversity of cultural forms of mathematics can be implemented by the use of eth- nomodelling, a process of translation and elaboration of problems and questions taken from non-academic systems. Here, we offer examples of studies conducted in Brazil and in the United States that explore this pedagogical approach. Our goal is to broaden the discussion of possibilities for ethnomathematics and associated ethnomodelling perspectives that respect the social diversity of distinct cultural group members with guarantees for the development of understanding of the different ways of doing mathematics through dialogue and respect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is intended as an example of \moral math", i.e., ideas culled from mathematics which can positively impact social behavior. Specifically, it combines fuzzy logic with the ethical decisions which hospital staff and others are sometimes forced to make about health care (e.g., euthanasia issues following Hurricane Katrina). The assumption is that such decisions involve value-laden choices which lend themselves to \fuzzy" or \smart" protocols. The article discusses the history of fuzzy logic -- what it is, how it is used, and how it might be even better-used as a support basis for making difficult choices in the health care setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eccentricity, though not inevitable, happens. Lightheartedly classifying examples, the author traces it back to factors, like creativity and absorption, essential to mathematical success, and recommends an attitude of amused tolerance towards others as well as to ourselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Math Students' Circles provide an opportunity for mathematicians to work in their communities to engage young students in mathematics as a human, aesthetic, and social endeavor. Sometimes referred to simply as Math Circles, these venues give mathematicians experience in introducing children to topics not typically seen in school curricula in an exciting, hands-on format. This article explores two Math Students' Circles (MSCs) in the state of Colorado from the point of view of two pre-tenure faculty members. One participated in MSCs for four years while working on her Ph.D. in mathematics, the other started an MSC as an offshoot of a successful professional development program for middle school mathematics teachers. We discuss how and why MSCs have in uenced our professional lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Devlin in [7] argues that video games are an ideal medium for the teaching and learning of mathematics, though he points out that very few 'good' mathematics video games exist.1 Building on a probabilistic board game developed in the 1980s, we created a mathematics computer game, E-Brock Bugs. The design of the game carefully follows Devlin's principles of a good mathematics video game, including a well-developed storyline, the selection of an in-game avatar, and an environment where mathematics arises in a natural and meaningful way. As a result, we argue that E-Brock Bugs is an epistemic computer game [1]; it goes beyond teaching basic facts and skills, and may encourage the players' development of mathematical thinking as `working mathematicians'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Godfrey Harold Hardy (1877-1947), the magnificent analyst who "discovered" the enigmatic Ramanujan and penned A Mathematician's Apology, is most widely known outside of mathematics for his work in genetics. How did Hardy, described by his colleague C.P. Snow as "the purest of the pure," become one of the founders of modern genetics? We explore this question in light of Hardy's own ideas about pure and elegant mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many university students, the last formal experience in a mathematics class- room is a single semester "general education" mathematics class. Traditionally, students in this type of class often hold negative attitudes towards mathemat- ics. Here I study a sample of students from this population (49 students at a large, urban, comprehensive public university enrolled in a "math for liberal arts majors" course) to research whether a positive experience in a freshman-level general education mathematics course correlates with a positive change in the students' attitude towards mathematics in general. I also explore which specific aspects of such a course contribute most to a positive student experience. The survey results show that while a positive experience in a freshman-level general education mathematics course correlates with positive responses in a student's attitude about several key variable components of attitude (including motivation to do mathematics, perceived usefulness of mathematics, and confidence while doing mathematics), it does not correlate with positive change. The course aspects that most correlate with a positive experience include the teacher/professor, difficulty level of the course, and workload. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore recreational mathematics from two perspectives. I first study how the concept appears in educational policy documents such as standards, syllabi, and curricula from a selection of countries to see if and in what way recreational mathematics can play a part in school mathematics. I find that recreational mathematics can be a central part, as in the case of India, but also completely invisible, as in the standards from USA. In the second part of the report, I take an educational historical approach. I observe that throughout history, recreational mathematics has been an important tool for learning mathematics. Recreational mathematics is then both a way of bringing pleasure and a tool for learning mathematics. Can it also be a tool for social empowerment? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to investigate what motivates women to choose mathematics as an undergraduate major and to further explore what shapes their future career goals, paying particular attention to their undergraduate experiences and their perceptions of the role of gender in these decisions. A series of semi-structured, individual interviews were conducted with twelve undergraduate women mathematics majors who were attending either a large public university or a small liberal arts college. This study found that strong mathematical identities and enjoyment of mathematics heavily in uenced their decisions to major in mathematics. At the career selection stage, these women desired careers that are service-oriented, social in nature, and involved mathematical applications. For those planning to become teachers, the desire to help others predominantly in uenced their career decision. Many of the non-teaching majors were unaware of mathematical careers other than teaching that satisfied these career qualities. Implications of these results with respect to women's participation in mathematics are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a short memoir about the role that math played in a certain part of my young life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hunger Games plot features a dystopian future in which twelve outer districts are oppressed by a centralized capital. The story focuses on the heroism of a sixteen-year-old girl named Katniss and how she tries to rise above the oppression that she experiences. It also features a special lottery and other twists that are sources of mathematical interest. This essay focuses on some of the mathematical issues raised by The Hunger Games in an effort to show that this story can be used to teach students (as well as other interested parties) some important concepts from mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I define mathematical beauty as cognisability and trace the import of this notion through several episodes from the history of mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Moral Math" refers to the study of ideas drawn from mathematics which can positively impact moral decision-making and social behavior. This essay describes a workshop designed to introduce these ideas to interested individuals of varying degrees of mathematical and theological sophistication. Created by a retired minister and former math professor, the workshop details five sets of interactive exercises culled from game theory, theoretical complexity, fuzzy logic, basic algebra, and simple arithmetic. Exercises are user-friendly, interactive, and easily related by analogy to various social issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]