This week, Dr. Piper Harron, mathematics professor based at the University of Hawaii, and a vocal feminist and supporter of under-represented groups in the academic mathematics community, published a provocative blogpost on the website of the AMS (American Mathematical Society), in… Read More ›
Matters Mathematical 
This page links to the Idle Ethnographer’s other research blog. It is about the sociology of mathematics. More precisely, it is about mathematical labour, the learning and teaching of mathematics, the jobs, careers and lives of mathematicians and computer scientists, sociology of science and sociology of work and employment. And the occasional fascinating fact about mathematics and computers. Oh, and of course, obscure mathematical jokes. Odd mixture? Read below to find out more.
Academia.edu: How to reproduce inequality in several easy steps
A study waiting to be done. Somebody? Here is the trigger: So: how is academia.edu reproducing and reinforcing inequality? By spatially positioning the male academic above; By choosing an older male academic and a younger female; By listing the male as… Read More ›
A New World…Out of Nothing
You are cordially invited to the workshop A New World… Out of Nothing (16th November 2016, University of Warwick, 1pm – 6pm) A group of experts will guide our journey: Prof Jeremy Gray (University of Warwick and Open University), Historian… Read More ›
Let’s cut the bullshit!
I study the work of mathematicians. I don’t call them informants but participants, because “informants” is a horrible word. Some of my participants enjoy being part of the research and take pains to explain and verbalise stuff to make it… Read More ›
Spurious correlations: a wonderful resource for teaching statistics?
Check these out by Tyler Vigen. Both hilarious and an excellent way of teaching a crucial idea:
#icanhazpdf
This new way of finding articles is cool. Three people sent me this link in the last few days (two mathematicians and one social scientist). It’s not new, but it is the first sign of organisation spreading beyond social scientists’… Read More ›
The price of a citation, or How did King Abdulaziz University get in the world’s top 10?
[reblogged from Matters Mathematical] According to a great recent blogpost by Berkeley academic Lior Pachter, there is something very fishy about university rankings. In last week’s global university ranking published by the US News and World Report (USNWR), the top 10 universities listed… Read More ›
Maths and Girls: Sensible Solutions…
Reblogged from the Idle Ethnographer’s mathematical blog, mattersmathematical.wordpress.com/2014/05/20/sensible-solutions
Emma Uprichard on the challenge of Big Data
Anything that helps us to see the world a bit differently […] can potentially help to nurture a healthy ‘sociological imagination’. But the frame will remain on the relative present – the ‘plastic present’ to use a phrase I’ve used… Read More ›
Bullshit jobs
Today I came across another good article by David Graeber about why there are so many really bad jobs around: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs. “In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have… Read More ›
Hijacked categories: “Employability” an “disability” as tools for government
Ephemera is a pretty good journal. And here is a really cool article about the categories that make up our understanding of labour, employment and work. Categories structure the way we understand the world – they don’t just “reflect” it truthfully…. Read More ›