Ben Orlin likes math and teaching. He’s bad at drawing. He has a blog on math and teaching with bad drawings.
This blog is about the things I like. It’s also about the things I can’t do. I hope that the juxtaposition here — polished, thoughtful writing alongside art that my fiancee (charitably) likens to “the average 6th grader” — captures the contradictory state of the teacher, of the mathematician – and, what the hell, of the human. We are all simultaneously experts and beginners, flaunting our talents while trying to cover our shortcomings the way an animal hides a wound. You could call this a “math blog,” or a “teaching blog,” but I would call it a blog about owning up to weakness and drawing strength from successes, however transient or trivial they may seem.
