Alex Botonakis

on the atlas — 12

• | Works on Mathematics Education1 savers
• How to become a GOOD Theoretical Physicist1 savers
• Student Membership | SIAM1 savers
• A semester of probability with Persi Diaconis | Monte Fischer1 savers
• Phil Agre's Home Page2 savers
• Date Me | Cody Zervas1 savers
• Radimentary | "Everything can be made radically elementary." ~Steven Rudich3 savers
• Computer as Condom1 savers
• The Pervert’s Remy Boydell Interviews Manga Master Inio Asano1 savers
• The University of Chicago Magazine1 savers
• Paul J. Sally, Jr., influential mathematician and educator, 1933 – 2013 | University of Chicago News1 savers
• Promethea Unbound - The Atavist Magazine1 savers

highlights — 4

• Politics: I consider myself apolitical. I believe in realpolitik. The right way to think about politics is as eldritch entities vying for dominance through the arena of public perception. All of the information we get is downstream of uncountable filters and manipulations; we can't possibly know enough to have an informed opinion. If we think we have one, we are much more likely to actually have a mind parasite planted by some interested party, and consequently end up acting, unknowingly, in their best interests and against our own. But even if we had accurate information, engaging in the stan…

  Date Me | Cody Zervas

• I was taken with an interview that Asano-sensei did with Naoki Urasawa, manga creator and host of Manben, a television show that interviews various contemporary manga artists about their work process. Asano-sensei’s approach to digital versus traditional art is maximalist; the time “saved” by processing reference pictures digitally to underpin backgrounds simply means more time to work back into them with ink, pulling the work together into a unified whole.

  The Pervert’s Remy Boydell Interviews Manga Master Inio Asano

• Sally’s approach to teaching teachers is easy to describe, not so easy to achieve: math teachers should understand the material well enough to explain it in a few different ways. Teachers who can’t are doomed to the “slower and louder” approach, he says. “If the kids don’t get it the first time, you say it again slower and louder.”

  The University of Chicago Magazine

• Sally’s motto for SESAME reflected one of his core beliefs: “To teach real mathematics, you better know some.” Aspiring teachers who took Sally’s courses such as Elements of Math Instruction, a graduate class in UChicago’s Urban Teacher Education Program, found that he expected them to understand concepts ranging from elementary-level to graduate-level math.

  Paul J. Sally, Jr., influential mathematician and educator, 1933 – 2013 | University of Chicago News