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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. 

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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 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

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!

Connect with us:

• Merritt Moore: (Insta, Twitter, LinkedIn)
• Vanessa Vakharia: @themathguru (Insta, Twitter, TikTok)
• Math Therapy: @maththerapy (Twitter)

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Today’s guest is an actual celeb in the math-world. We’re talking A-list, we’re talking literally MILLIONS OF FANS. Grant Sanderson explains very high level math on his YouTube channel, 3Blue1Brown, in a way that is accessible for anyone to tune in and learn from!  Vanessa and Grant discuss how he makes math so appealing and unintimidating, how a feeling of discovery or usefulness can help students develop a sense of ownership over a topic, and how teachers can motivate their students to pay attention offline in the classroom.

About Grant

Grant Sanderson is the creator behind the very popular math YouTube channel, 3Blue1Brown (over 4 million subscribers!). He has collaborated with places like Quanta, Udacity and the Julia Lab at MIT on math education and outreach projects, as well as with other YouTubers, such as Numberphile, Stand-up Maths and Physics Girl.  You can listen to Grant’s own podcast, The 3b1b Podcast.

Show notes:

• Grant’s bitcoin video that Vanessa references
• Grant's video about colliding blocks computing pi
• Sunil Singh (who Grant and Vanessa spoke about) was a guest on Math Therapy season 2 - listen to his episode here and learn lots of juicy mathematician gossip!

Connect with us:

• 3blue1brown: (YouTube, Twitter)
• Grant Sanderson's personal YouTube
• Vanessa Vakharia: @themathguru (Insta, Twitter, TikTok)
• Math Therapy: @maththerapy (Twitter)

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We’re not the only ones who binge-watched Netflix’s The Circle over the pandemic, and one reason we were OBSESSED was the breakout star of the show: Terilisha, a math teacher AND musician, who stole our hearts with her IDGAF attitude! Today Vanessa chats with Terilisha about her experience on the show, how the media (and society) struggle to accept that people can be multifaceted, how the educational system fails us early by not prioritizing practical math skills like personal finances, and how she’s determined to defy the stereotype of who/what a “math person” can be.

About Terilisha

Terilisha is a songstress, songwriter, actress and native of Dallas, Texas. She was featured on Season 2 of Netflix’s The Circle, and her latest EP, “The Blue Heart” is available on Spotify, Pandora, Google Play, iTunes/Apple Music and all digital & streaming locations.

Show notes:

• Watch The Circle Season 2 on Netflix to see Terilisha!
• Listen to Terilisha’s “The Blue Heart” EP on all digital & streaming platforms

Connect with us:

• Terilisha: (Insta, Twitter, Spotify)
• Vanessa Vakharia: @themathguru (Insta, Twitter, TikTok)
• Math Therapy: @maththerapy (Twitter)

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Will you be watching the Oscars this Sunday, comparing the winners with your predictions? Well one person who definitely will be is our first guest of season 4 - Ben Zauzmer, author of Oscarmetrics!  Ben, who is also the director of baseball analytics for the New York Mets, uses stats from past and present awards to try to predict this year's winners, and we also discuss representation and diversity among award winners and across all media, as well as the classic Math Therapy debate: can math and pop culture truly be BFF?

Show notes:

• Buy Ben’s Book: “Oscarmetrics: The Math Behind the Biggest Night in Hollywood”
• The article Ben co-wrote for The Hollywood Reporter about diversity in the Oscars: Is the Oscars’ Inclusion Push Working? Breaking Down the Surprising Academy Numbers
• Check out Ben’s predictions for the 2022 Oscars

Connect with us:

• Ben Zauzmer: (Twitter)
• Vanessa Vakharia: @themathguru (Insta, Twitter, TikTok)
• Math Therapy: @maththerapy (Twitter)

Transcript for today’s episode: www.maththerapypodcast.com

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We are BACK!  We've got 10 incredible and inspiring guests lined up for the new season of Math Therapy, each with a totally different history and relationship with math.

Season 4 launches March 24th and because that’s a few days before the Oscars, we’re starting with a fascinating chat with Ben Zauzmer, author of Oscarmetrics - he uses statistics to try to predict this year’s winners!  We discuss some juicy topics like representation and diversity in the media & among award-winners, and how math and pop culture can totally be BFF, so I can’t wait for you to hear it. 

Until then, you can:

• Make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen
• Catch up on past episodes
• Share the show with a friend
• Rate/review the podcast
• Follow me, Vanessa, @themathguru on Instagram or Twitter

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When this podcast started, interviewing a convicted murderer - while he was still in prison, no less - was admittedly not on Vanessa’s “Math Therapy guest” bingo card. But then we heard how Christopher Havens discovered math in solitary confinement halfway through a 25-year sentence, and committed the rest of his life to rehabilitating himself and repaying his debt to society.  On today’s season 3 finale of Math Therapy, Vanessa chats with Christopher about how a lack of purpose in his youth and the misguided desire to be “cool” led him down a very dark road, how math gave him a sense of spirituality and purpose in prison, and how his own rehabilitation led him to withdraw from the stereotypical “prison game” and devote the rest of his life to developing programs and resources for other prisoners to do the same.

About Christopher 

Christopher Havens is a mathematician & president/cofounder of the Prison Mathematics Project, a nonprofit program that uses the transformative powers of mathematics to lead prisoners to a life of desistance from crime. While his current focus is in cryptography and the theory of groups, he works to popularize mathematics and redefine what productivity looks like in prison. He is a researcher in number theory and has recently published his first academic paper in the journal or Research in Number Theory, while serving out his sentence. 

Show notes

• Popular Mechanics profile on Christopher’s life story
• PrisonMathProject.org
• HumanMe.org blog feat. inmates committed to rehabilitation

Connect with us:

• Prison Mathematics Project: (Twitter, Insta, Facebook)
• Vanessa Vakharia: @themathguru (Insta, Twitter, TikTok)
• Math Therapy: @maththerapy (Twitter)

Transcript for today’s episode: www.maththerapypodcast.com

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The year was 2020. A tweet went viral on the interwebs and Vanessa damn near lost her mind. Somewhere in the UK, Bex had tweeted that the best part of being an adult was “opting out” of math; online mag Bustle picked it up and next thing we know Bex was on our podcast - turns out she’s even more hilarious over Zoom than she is on Twitter! On today’s episode she describes how dyscalculia (number dyslexia) influenced her rocky relationship with math, how she learned to cope and ended up working in the financial industry, and how things could have been different if she had better educational support at school.  And as a bonus, she shares how her give-no-f*cks attitude helps her ignore the haters on social media - get ready to laugh, cry, and contemplate all your life choices!

About Bex

Bex is a 26 year old, living in London. Despite working in financial services, she struggles with numbers. Outside of avoiding basic mathematical problems between 9-5, she is a prolific tweeter, at-home karaoke extraordinaire and dog admirer.

Show notes

• 1:06 - Bustle’s Instagram post with Bex’s tweet
• 2:02 - Bex’s tweet about opting out of math
• 2:08 - Vanessa and Bex’s Twitter back-and-forth
• 7:04 - Drama re: Gracie Cunningham’s viral TikTok asking about the origins of math

Connect with us:

• Bex: (Twitter, Insta)
• Vanessa Vakharia: @themathguru (Insta, Twitter, TikTok)
• Math Therapy: @maththerapy (Twitter)

Transcript for today’s episode: www.maththerapypodcast.com

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Alright teachers, this one’s for you! Today Vanessa chats with Dr. Roger Fischer, an educator from Montana who is not just a hardcore fan of the podcast but also a natural math therapist himself! Roger explains how small instances of math trauma can lead to long-term effects on students, how he incorporates mindfulness and compassion into his lesson plans, and how there is absolutely no such thing as a stupid question.

About Roger

Dr. Roger Fischer loves math. He hasn’t always loved it, though - it took a really good math tutor to show him how passionate he is about making sense of problems and helping others do the same. He has been teaching math for 16 years and developed a unique way to engage learners by first making them feel safe, heard, and validated. You can follow him on YouTube at Dr. Roger Fischer, connect with him on LinkedIn or visit his website compassionatemathtutoring.com.

Show notes

• 11:53 - “The Teaching Gap”, the book that talks about teaching as a cultural activity
• 12:45 - Vanessa’s interview this season with teacher/mathfluencer Esther Brunat
• 14:26 - “Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You Had” by Tracy Zager, the book Roger gave to his student to help her become a math teacher
• 27:25 - The John Mighton episode from Math Therapy season 2 that Roger and Vanessa can't stop talking about

Connect with us:

• Roger Fischer: @rfischeresq (Twitter)
• Vanessa Vakharia: @themathguru (Insta, Twitter, TikTok)
• Math Therapy: @maththerapy (Twitter)

Transcript for today’s episode: www.maththerapypodcast.com

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We all hate harmful stereotypes, but have you ever thought of breaking stereotypes … by simply fulfilling them?! Being an Indian woman who doesn’t like STEM carries many consequences, and on today’s episode, Vanessa talks to South Asian comedian Abby Govindan about how women are pressured to either resist or conform to social and cultural expectations, and how she’s navigated that struggle through humour - especially through provocative tweets which is how Vanessa found her in the first place!

About Abby

Abby Govindan is a comedian.  (ed. note - this is literally the bio she gave us :)

Show notes

• 1:49 - Abby’s viral tweet about women in STEM

Connect with us:

• Abby Govindan: (Twitter, Insta)
• Vanessa Vakharia: @themathguru (Insta, Twitter, TikTok)
• Math Therapy: @maththerapy (Twitter)

Transcript for today’s episode: www.maththerapypodcast.com