Math Therapy

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Longtime listeners will remember Season 2's Jill Waddell who shared her inspiring decision to switch careers at age 40 and go back to school for power engineering - facing down her lifelong math anxiety along the way!  Vanessa caught up with her after graduation to find out how things turned out (spoiler alert - she was class valedictorian!) and hear what advice she'd give her younger self.   

Jill's epic story can show everyone that it's never too late in life to face your fears ... even if one of them is math!

• Listen to Jill's Season 2 episode: How “Math Therapy” changed my life w/ Jill Waddell

Contact us:

• Vanessa Vakharia: Instagram, TikTok, Email
• Math Therapy: Text the Podcast

More Math Therapy:

• Join the Facebook group
• Get the book: Corwin, Amazon
• Audiobook: Audible, Spotify
• Merch store: Shop here

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There's no other way to say this: we went to prison for Pi Day this year.  Longtime listeners will remembers Vanessa's fascinating and inspiring interview with Christopher Havens, an inmate serving a 25-year sentence for murder who has rehabilitated himself with math and founded the Prison Mathematics Project (Season 3, Episode 10).  Vanessa helped with the virtual Pi Day celebration last year, but this year was a first: PMP was able to host an in-person event at Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility in Michigan, and Christopher asked Vanessa to MC!

She brought along the OG Math Therapy team, producers Sabina and David, and they recorded their thoughts from the road both en route and immediately after leaving the unforgettable event.  Vanessa also unpacks some of the many complex reflections she's had since the trip, and shares the ways Pi Day in prison was ultimately no different from the math events she's facilitated at countless schools and conferences - further proof that the capacity to embrace math is truly universal.

Find more about the Prison Math Project at prisonmathproject.org, where you can:

• donate
• volunteer as a mentor for an inmate
• sign up an inmate interested in the program
• info and history of Christopher and the Prison Math Project

Contact us:

• Vanessa Vakharia: Instagram, TikTok, Email
• Math Therapy: Text the Podcast

More Math Therapy:

• Join the Facebook group
• Get the book: Corwin, Amazon
• Audiobook: Audible, Spotify
• Merch store: Shop here

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Math Therapy is (briefly) back!  We've been hard at work on a new season which I can't wait for you to hear soon, but I had to share an excerpt of one of the interviews I just did - you'll see why.  Stanford professor Jo Boaler is one of my math heroes, I referenced her all through my master's thesis, and her work in trying to make math education more equitable has been an inspiration to literally millions of people.

But there are some who disagree with her vision so much that they have taken things far beyond the classroom, from accusing her of academic dishonesty to media attacks which have led to threats of violence towards her and her family.  So I wanted to share her story of the renewed attacks that she's currently dealing with - if she has helped/inspired you in your math journey please let her know!

• Jo's recent letter on her Stanford site detailing her story
• Youcubed.org - Stanford-backed platform she leads with tons of free resources for students and teachers
• My fave book of hers: Limitless Mind 
• Connect with Jo Boaler: (Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok)

Contact us:

• Vanessa Vakharia: Instagram, TikTok, Email
• Math Therapy: Text the Podcast

More Math Therapy:

• Join the Facebook group
• Get the book: Corwin, Amazon
• Audiobook: Audible, Spotify
• Merch store: Shop here

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In our final episode of the season, Vanessa chats with math professor Dr. Anthony Bonato about what it means to be queer in - let’s face it - the historically snobby and closed-minded field that is math. But as soon as you hear Anthony in today’s episode, you’ll understand there will be no silencing his advocacy for diversity & inclusion in math … or for that matter his insistence that Adele’s album titles actually form a unique prime-numbers based mathematical sequence?!

Anthony discusses how pop culture can be a tool to make math education more fun, and also how the richest mathematical problem solving that is needed to solve our world’s great challenges can only reach its full potential if we are involving EVERY person in the process.

*This episode was recorded in December 2021; Anthony mentions a potential invasion of Ukraine by Russia, which was being discussed as a possibility in the news at the time, but no invasion had begun yet.

About Anthony: (Website)

Dr. Anthony Bonato is a professor in the Department of Mathematics at Toronto Metropolitan University. His research interest is in graph theory, with applications to real-world complex networks and graph searching games such as Cops and Robbers. He is on the Editorial Board of Contributions to Discrete Mathematics, and was Editor-in-Chief of the journal Internet Mathematics. He serves on the Canadian Mathematical Society Board of Directors as Director-Ontario, the BIRS Board of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, and the NSERC Mathematics and Statistics Liaison Committee.

Show notes:

• Read Anthony’s articles about Adele’s mathematical sequence for naming her albums and about making math fun
• Check out the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences 
• Read Anthony’s blog post: On being a gay mathematician 
• Check out LGBTQ+ math day & LGBTQ+ STEM day
• Read Anthony’s latest book, “Limitless Minds: Interviews with Mathematicians.”

Contact us:

• Vanessa Vakharia: Instagram, TikTok, Email
• Math Therapy: Text the Podcast

More Math Therapy:

• Join the Facebook group
• Get the book: Corwin, Amazon
• Audiobook: Audible, Spotify
• Merch store: Shop here

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Did you know that the infamous math movie Mean Girls was actually inspired by Rosalind Wiseman’s non-fiction book called Queen Bees and Wannabes? Today Vanessa talks to Rosalind about why we need to change the media and messaging that girls get about how it’s not “cool” to be good at math.

How can we teach students that they can be good at more than one thing? How can we help them embrace who they are individually in the face of the completely insane pressures of high school!?!  Well, don’t despair; Rosalind has a whole career’s worth of inspiring answers to those questions, and provides hope that we can fix our messed up education system.

About Rosalind: (Twitter, Insta)

Rosalind Wiseman is the founder of Cultures of Dignity, an organization that shifts the way communities think about our physical and emotional wellbeing by working in close partnership with the experts of those communities–young people, educators, policy makers, and business and political leaders.  She is the author of multiple New York Times Best Sellers including Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and the New Realities of Girl World.

Show notes:

• Pre-order Rosalind’s new book co-written with Shanterra McBride: Courageous Discomfort: How to Have Important, Brave, Life-Changing Conversations about Race and Racism: 20 Questions and Answers for Becoming a Better Advocate
• The article that Vanessa wrote with Michole Washington about police brutality techniques used in math class 

Contact us:

• Vanessa Vakharia: Instagram, TikTok, Email
• Math Therapy: Text the Podcast

More Math Therapy:

• Join the Facebook group
• Get the book: Corwin, Amazon
• Audiobook: Audible, Spotify
• Merch store: Shop here

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply)

You may be thinking “what the F*CK is a dude wall?!”, and today Vanessa talks to the incredible Katie Hafner to find out.  Katie is an author, journalist, and host of the podcast “Lost Women of Science,” whose mission is to tell the stories of female scientists who history has inconveniently forgotten.

But how do we prevent this from happening in the future? How do we encourage more girls and women to go into STEM, and how do we ensure their portraits aren’t left off the walls of our academic institutions?

About Katie (Twitter, Website)

Katie Hafner is host and executive producer of Lost Women of Science. She is a longtime reporter for the New York Times, where she continues to be a frequent contributor, writing on healthcare and technology. Hafner is uniquely positioned to tell these stories. Not only does she bring a skilled hand to complex narratives, but she has been writing about women in STEM for nearly 30 years. The author of six books of nonfiction, she is currently host and executive producer of Our Mothers Ourselves, an interview podcast that celebrates extraordinary mothers.

Show notes:

• Connect with Lost Women of Science: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
• If you see a dude wall, please email: [email protected]
• Listen to Lost Women of Science & Katie's other podcast Our Mothers, Ourselves
• Pre-order “The Boys,” Katie’s book coming out in July (where the main character and his mom talk in Fortran!)
• Read the study from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about interest and perceived interest in computer science

Contact us:

• Vanessa Vakharia: Instagram, TikTok, Email
• Math Therapy: Text the Podcast

More Math Therapy:

• Join the Facebook group
• Get the book: Corwin, Amazon
• Audiobook: Audible, Spotify
• Merch store: Shop here

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply)

One of the missions of this podcast is challenging stereotypes, and on today’s episode we tackle a big one: Asians and math. Steven Tran grew up with Asian parents, and the pressures and expectations from his family, community, and society as a whole affected his perception of his own math ability.

Getting caught cheating in high school could have led him down a very different educational path if not for a teacher that treated him with genuine care and compassion, and, most importantly, believed in Steven and told him so.  Steven tells Vanessa about how that experience informed his own approach to teaching his students math as a tutor at The Math Guru.

About Steven

Steven Tran is an undergraduate student at Ryerson in the Biomedical Sciences program, working as a tutor and in a startup.

Show notes:

• Visions of Science, where Steven worked and had his great mentor, Cam!

Contact us:

• Vanessa Vakharia: Instagram, TikTok, Email
• Math Therapy: Text the Podcast

More Math Therapy:

• Join the Facebook group
• Get the book: Corwin, Amazon
• Audiobook: Audible, Spotify
• Merch store: Shop here

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply)

This one’s for all the adults out there who are like “hmmm maybe it’s not too late to learn a little math…”! On today’s episode Vanessa talks to journalist A.K. Whitney, who went back to school at 38 to learn math and chronicled it in Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post, and her own podcast/website delightfully titled “The Mathochism Project”. She is basically the definition of overcoming math trauma and making it less of a stigma - but how did she do it? Why don’t more people do it? And how can we make math less traumatic for women and girls?

About A.K. (Twitter) & The Mathochism Project: (Twitter, Website)

A.K. Whitney is a journalist with 25 years of experience in print and online. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Cosmopolitan and more. She was a regular contributor to Noodle, an educational website, writing mostly about society’s fraught relationship with math, which is the subject of her website, The Mathochism Project.

Show notes:

• A.K.’s article for Cosmopolitan: How I Finally Got Over My Fear of Math
• A.K’s article for The Washington Post: Why did I give up on math? Ask my mom.
• The Ohio State MOOC calculus course that A.K. recommends
• An article about “the cult of genius” from the mathematician, Jordan Ellenberg, who coined the term
• The CBC article explaining why saying “it’s not rocket science” isn’t fair to other professions

Contact us:

• Vanessa Vakharia: Instagram, TikTok, Email
• Math Therapy: Text the Podcast

More Math Therapy:

• Join the Facebook group
• Get the book: Corwin, Amazon
• Audiobook: Audible, Spotify
• Merch store: Shop here

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply)

Nothing shows how important teacher-student relationships can be than actually being friends with some of your students over a DECADE later, as is the case with Vanessa and Sophie Soberano. Sophie was one of Vanessa’s first tutoring students, long before The Math Guru even existed!

Sophie went from daily math meltdowns in high school to becoming a math teacher who leads her class with compassion and creativity, and today she shares how she uses a mindfulness approach to get her students ready for learning before class. Whether you’re a teacher, a student, a parent, or you just want to hear some hope and optimism about overcoming math anxiety, this episode is for you.

About Sophie

Sophie Soberano has a passion for early childhood education. With almost 10 years experience as an ECE and a Masters of Primary Education, Sophie uses her experience from daycares, nursery schools and elementary schools, to provide an individualized play-based approach to learning. She is currently teaching private pods in family homes in addition to senior nursery at a community school. 

Contact us:

• Vanessa Vakharia: Instagram, TikTok, Email
• Math Therapy: Text the Podcast

More Math Therapy:

• Join the Facebook group
• Get the book: Corwin, Amazon
• Audiobook: Audible, Spotify
• Merch store: Shop here

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply)

Today’s guest has a dream: to dance on the moon.  With a robot.  The craziest part?  This is actually an attainable goal for Dr. Merritt Moore, better known as the “Quantum Ballerina”! Merritt has a PhD in Atomic & Laser Physics and is also a professional ballerina, and if that’s not enough for one resumé, she was recently selected for astronaut training. She also went viral during a pandemic lockdown with a video of her dancing with an actual robot as her partner.

Today, Merritt tells Vanessa about her fascinating journey, how all her interests intersect, and the inspiring role her parents played early on in fostering an environment in which learning was not just encouraged but celebrated.

About Merritt: (Insta, Twitter, LinkedIn)

Dr. Merritt Moore calls herself the “quantum ballerina.” She has a PhD in Atomic and Laser Physics from the University of Oxford AND has pursued a professional ballet career, previously with the Zurich Ballet, Boston Ballet, English National Ballet, and Norwegian National Ballet. She was recently awarded Forbes 30 Under 30, and she was one of the 12 selected candidates to undergo rigorous astronaut training on BBC Two "Astronauts: Do You Have What It Takes?" She is featured in the bestseller "Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls".

Show notes:

• Check out Merritt dancing with her robot!

Contact us:

• Vanessa Vakharia: Instagram, TikTok, Email
• Math Therapy: Text the Podcast

More Math Therapy:

• Join the Facebook group
• Get the book: Corwin, Amazon
• Audiobook: Audible, Spotify
• Merch store: Shop here