G’Day!
I am James, a math guy.
And having grown up in Australia, I also consider myself a maths guy.
You might know me from Exploding Dots, a mathematical concept that has gained some public notice. (Alternatively, you might have encountered my “How to Fold a Fitted Sheet” video—I am quietly chuffed with that piece too.)
My mission is to bring joy, meaning, and a sense of humanness to the mathematical experience. Since most people only ever encounter mathematics in a school setting, I tend to focus my efforts on the K-12 curriculum.
We don’t typically associate “human story,” “human connection and delight,” and “joy” with school math, and that saddens me. Efforts of standardization, set curriculum pacing, and assessment—loads and loads of assessment—seem to have driven humanness out of classroom math.
I want to bring it back in!
And I hope the little reflections I share here can inspire and give practical help folk to do just that.
There is “wiggle room” for joy in even the most rigid of teaching environments.
We can all serve as ambassadors of genuine math joy.
Let’s bring back the joy!
My Mathematical Background in Brief
I came to the U.S. in 1988 to pursue a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Princeton University. Sharing the humanness of mathematics has always been my passion—a passion that developed and persisted despite my own rather uninspiring K-12 mathematical education in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Since then, I’ve been in college and high-school classrooms teaching, discussing, and engaging students and educators in delight and awe of mathematics. I even left the university setting to become a full-time high school math teacher—the most rigid of teaching environments in my experience. I taught at that level for close to a decade.
Today, I consult with school and college communities worldwide. I’ve published over a dozen books on mathematics (as well as several self-published works), developed two “Great Courses” with The Teaching Company, built a bit of YouTube presence and X (Twitter) presence, and co-founded the Global Math Project—all with the aim of transforming the perception and experience of mathematics globally.
To learn more about me, the Global Math Project, and Exploding dots, have a looksee here.
If you're interested in exploring my latest writings on school mathematics, feel free to download the chapters of "Arithmetic, Algebra, and Radical Comprehension of Math" here.