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Posts published by “Charles Beall”

Department of Education will face scrutiny in Trump’s second term

The fate of the US Department of Education (ED), first formed in 1979 and receiving on-and-off criticism in presidential campaigns since then, is now perhaps at its most uncertain stage after the re-election of Donald Trump to the presidency.

Mathematics prizes and awards

With last week’s announcements of the 2024 Nobel Prize winners, I wanted to dedicate an article to the major accolades that honor achievements and contributions in mathematics.

Busy beaver (the mathematical version)

If there were any skeptical readers of my last column thinking to themselves “how on Earth are beavers related to fundamental mathematics,” I respond to them with: doubters be dammed!

Busy beaver (the non-mathematical version)

As the title suggests, this article will be incredibly light on actual mathematics (which is probably music to many an ear) since, also as the title suggests, it has been an incredibly busy start to the semester for me.

What’s all that noise?

To ring in the new school year, I have frequently listened to perhaps the most unexciting artist on  Spotify: White Noise Radiance.

Is mathematics a universal language?

As I wrap up the second year of the For Math’s Sake column, I want to get at some broad questions about mathematics I’ve been mulling over and share some thoughts that will hopefully lay the groundwork for more in-depth articles in the coming school year.

What does a math Ph.D. student actually do?

The title of this article is a question I usually get asked. Admittedly, it’s a hard question to answer briefly since a sentence like, “I take graduate-level courses to gain a general background in the subject and then conduct original research in mathematics in order to defend a thesis,” leads to many follow-up questions.