Brendan W. Sullivan

Despite the diversity of AI tools, their emergence into higher education reinforces the importance of process over product in learning and teaching. Few academics would say that our courses are fundamentally about exams, reports, and essays: we intend these products to be proxies for demonstrating an evolving process of learning. However, our learners often mistake our intentions because education systems and our culture put so much emphasis on grades and grading (Forsyth, Citation2022). The rise of AI provides a distinct opportunity for educators and institutions to explicitly make the case that learning requires critical engagement with productive failure; students cannot develop deep knowledge, skill, and judgment without struggle guided and supported by disciplinary and pedagogical experts. AI tools have the potential to augment that human work, if we resist the temptation of the “illusion of learning” by replacing human effort with technological gimmicks.

Great point about product vs. process in this book review on AI in education:

"Learning requires critical engagement with productive failure," but "learners often mistake our intentions because education systems and our culture put so much emphasis on grades"

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

My "Math, Revealed" series is freely available to anyone -- no paywall! -- in the thread below.

Whenever someone reports a percentage but not an absolute number, ask yourself why;
whenever someone reports an absolute number but not a percentage, ask yourself why

"Next semester, do less that means more"

Thinking about what this might mean for a calculus course. What can we do less of to make space for more meaningful learning experiences?

Her response: "10 is afraid of 11 'cause 11 8 3"

She has another one!

Q: Why was 7 afraid of 8?

A: Because 8 8 16!

My 7-year-old has made up something she calls an "equation joke":

Q: Why was 3 afraid of 5?

A: Because 5 8 13!

#TMWYK

In Taxicab Geometry, Pi Equals 4 and Circles Aren’t Round (Gift Article) In the world of taxicab geometry, even the Pythagorean theorem takes a back seat.

My new #math series in the New York Times, "Math Revealed," is aimed at everyone, whether you love math or not. Have a look! You can read it here for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Today's example of Betteridge's Law of Headlines comes to us via the Boston Globe:

Trump says Harvard is teaching ‘remedial mathematics.’ Is there any truth to that?
www.bostonglobe.com/2025/06/08/n...

Explanation of Betteridge's Law:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteri...

And fun fact: that plaza at Boston City Hall is where I got to see Neutral Milk Hotel on their reunion tour a while back!

www.setlist.fm/setlist/neut...

Wean Hall on Carnegie Mellon University campus. Wide, brutalist, concrete building with windows.

Reminds me a lot of Wean Hall at CMU (which people also say resembles a turtle eating a cheeto!)

Did the idea of using Grade Point Median go anywhere? Do any schools actually do that already?

We lament that students are disengaged from the important parts of learning and yet here are professors modeling the same kind of disengagement. Where does this end? I'm very sympathetic to the problems of too many students, not enough time. Those were the circumstances for my entire career.

...allowing an LLM to make your presentation from your notes is to actively avoid what is, in reality, part of the creation of that presentation. I've been doing a couple of these things a week since January and I can tell you that making the slides always always always results in changes.

2. But the more pernicious risk may be what I call "self-alienation" that is you gradually remove yourself from the experience of your job until you've entirely lost touch with what is and meaningful about this work. Processing student writing with an LLM is not the same thing as reading it...

Great ready for faculty bot-ification If we want there to be such a thing as college faculty, that is.

1. Faculty who use LLMs for core aspects of their labor are inviting their own replacement. This is obvious and a cycle that will mirror what happened with adjunctification. You are showing you are unnecessary. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/blog...

We are right at one month away from the 2025 Grading Conference (June 11--13), and have just posted the schedule. Check out all the amazing presentations we will have this year!

www.centerforgradingreform.org/grading-conf...

The new pope has a BS in mathematics from Villanova, which explains how he was so successful at becoming the largest cardinal.

If we do not find an alternative source of funding, this means that the US will not be represented in ongoing conversations with the global community about issues in mathematics education.

The isolationism is not just political, it is also intellectual and will have consequences for decades.

I am the current chair of the US National Commission for Mathematics Instruction. Our commission represents the US in an international community of mathematics education under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences.

Our very modest NSF funding has not been renewed. #iteachmath

"In a data-driven society, numeracy is essential for making decisions evaluating information and holding leaders accountable. Civil rights leader Bob Moses rightfully called math literacy the civil rights issue of the 21st century."

I would actually prefer it if my discipline wasn't used as a proxy for intelligence / academic worth in the culture wars.

Fun fact I just learned: Google Sheets does precedence wrong. It interprets "=-A2^2" as (-A2)^2 rather than -(A2^2).

Great suggestions here for math instructors at all levels:

1. Meet students where they are
2. Show students that instructors authentically care about their learning
3. Provide "interesting, challenging and joyful work to all students"

Thanks for sharing! I'm curious what you and your dinner companions discussed..

1^2-0^2=1-0=1

2^2-1^2=4-1=3

3^2-2^2=9-4=5

4^2-3^2=16-9=7

5^2-4^2=25-16=9

I see that differences between consecutive outputs of f(x)=x^2 are increasing by a constant amount. Is that convincing enough that f'(x) should be linear?

Today is Bandcamp Friday.

It's a good analogy, not surprised many people would come up with it! I'm definitely going to put it in my syllabi for next year.

As the linguist Emily M. Bender has noted, teachers don’t ask students to write essays because the world needs more student essays. The point of writing essays is to strengthen students’ critical-thinking skills; in the same way that lifting weights is useful no matter what sport an athlete plays, writing essays develops skills necessary for whatever job a college student will eventually get. Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way.

I remember seeing this somewhere... a quick search turned up this Ted Chiang piece

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

And what better place to talk about alternative grading than at the Grading Conference, June 11--13? 😄