Writing

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I tell stories about math, science, technology, and higher education. Some of my stories combine two or more of these topics. Here are selected examples:    ​

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WIRED magazine:

• A 'Godfather of AI' Calls for an Organization to Defend Humanity 

• Radioactive Snakes May Monitor Fukushima Fallout

 

Quanta Magazine:

• The Computing Pioneer Helping AI See ​​

• The NASA Engineer Who's a Mathematician at Heart

• Math of the Penguins   

• The Computer Scientist Who Can't Stop Telling Stories (a top-5 most-read Quanta article of the year)

• Mathematicians Will Never Stop Proving the Prime Number Theorem

• To Boldly Go Where No Internet Protocol Has Gone Before (republished in Scientific American)

• Cryptography Pioneer Seeks Secure Elections the Low-Tech Way

• Secrets of Math From the Bee Whisperer

• ​The Architect of Modern Algorithms

• Click here to see all of my stories at Quanta.​

 

Boston Globe: 

• ​Six reasons why $90,000 college costs are bad news even if few pay that amount 

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Inside Higher Ed, where three of my stories ranked in the top 10 most-read stories for 2023. (See stories #4, #7, and #10 here.) I've written more than 100 stories for Inside Higher Ed. Here are some:

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• Facial recognition heads to class. Will students benefit?

• AI has a language diversity problem. Humans do, too. 

• AI Raises complicated questions about authorship 

• Machines can craft essays. How should writing be taught now?

• How AI writing tools both help and hinder equity

• Colleges race to hire and build amid 'AI goldrush'

• University of California System bans fully online degrees

• Vermont State University’s ‘all-digital’ library fiasco

• ChatGPT sparks debate on how to design assignments now

• AI writing detection: A losing battle worth fighting

• Amid backlash, Stanford pulls 'harmful language' list

• Computer science's challenges, as seen by its pioneers

• Publisher blocks access to e-books; scrambling fall classes

• College in the metaverse is here. Is higher ed ready​

• Click here to view all of my technology stories at Inside Higher Ed.

 

The Atlantic

• Penguins Are Nature's Best Snugglers

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Washington Post

• Why Researchers Are 100 Percent Sure We Love Round Numbers

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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an editorially independent magazine at the University of Chicago founded by Albert Einstein, where I've published more than 50 stories.

• AI Godfather' Yoshua Bengio: We Need a Humanity Defense Organization

• Do scientists need an AI Hippocratic oath?

• DeepMind's David Silver on games, beauty, and AI's potential to avert human-made disasters

• How to talk with your kids about the war in Ukraine

• Illia Ponomarenko: Ukraine's most-followed war journalist is a 'dude' from Donbas

• Will Putin go nuclear?

• Kateryna Pavlova battled a pandemic, wildfires, corruption, and sexism in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

• Satellites and climate change threaten the night. This October meteor shower celebrates it.

• Click  here to view all of my stories at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

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Notices of the American Mathematical Society 

• Some colleges with vulnerable students cull math programs 

• Machine-Human collaborations accelerate math research

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Scientific American

• The 'Father of the Internet' is Building an Interplanetary Internet (Italian edition) 

• Voronoi Tessellations and Scutoids Are Everywhere: So What Are They, Anyway?

 

Literary Hub

• Why Do Some Mathematicians Think That They're Poets?

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Nature

• Why You Should Join a Journal's Editorial Board 

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Chronicle of Higher Education

• Sharing Math’s Appeal with First-Generation Students 

• The Outlier Who Wasn’t 

• Why Would a Mathematician Want an MFA?

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Slate

• Why Have So Few Women Won the Most Important Award in Computing?

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Discover 

• How Will COVID-19 Contact-Tracing Apps Work in the US? 

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My freelance science and education articles in a variety of publications: 

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September 11 Helped Us Discover a Small Dream | WBUR - Boston's National Public Radio

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When Ideology or Special Interests Hijack Science Topics | National Association of Science Writers

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When an FDA Ruling Drastically Curbed Fecal Transplants, I Performed My Own | Undark Magazine

See also: Undark Episode 33: Part 3 - Surviving C. diff. Podcast in which Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate program in science writing Seth Mnoonkin interviews Susan D'Agostino on the subject of this essay

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Maths Can Help You Thrive During the COVID-19 Pandemic | Oxford University Press Blog

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The Heidelberg Laureate Forum: Inspiring the Next Generation of Mathematicians and Computer Scientists | Mathematical Association of America's Math Horizons magazine

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America's Students Should Take the Less Indebted Path | Financial Times

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Dian Fossey’s Unconventional Methods Hinted at the Importance of Women’s Perspective in Intellectual Pursuits | Times Higher Education

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Hidden Figures in Math | Ms. magazine 

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You Can’t Cure Students’ Ills By Typing on Your Computer | Print headline: Don’t Record—Just Listen | Times Higher Education 

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​A Textbook Case of Questionable Ethics | American Association of University Professors’ Academe

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Reevaluating Teaching Evaluations | American Association of Colleges and Universities’ Liberal Education

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Every Minute of Your Life Has Been Interesting | Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

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An EDGE in Mathematics for Women: The Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education Program | Book chapter in Women in Mathematics: Celebrating the Centennial of the Mathematical Association of America

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To Fall in Love With Math, Do This | Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

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Thinking About Tipping Points | National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Mathematics Teacher

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​Dinosaurs Dig Paleontologists Who Do Math | Mathematical Association of America's Math Horizons

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​Facebook and Texting vs. Textbooks and Faces | Mathematical Association of America's Math Horizons

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A (Mostly) Unwired Mathematics Classroom | Mathematical Association of America Focus

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Reports:

From 2014 - 2017, I served as an appointed member of New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan's Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education Task Force, during which she contributed to multiple reports every year and regularly spoke on behalf of the governor at press conferences and other state, national, and international conferences. Selected reports:  

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Implementing Pathways to STEM Excellence: Inspiring Students, Empowering Teachers and Raising Standards – First Annual Report to Her Excellency Margaret Wood Hassan, Governor, State of New Hampshire | Office of the New Hampshire Governor

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Pathways to STEM Excellence: Inspiring Students, Empowering Teachers and Raising Standards – Final Report to Her Excellency Margaret Wood Hassan, Governor, State of New Hampshire | Office of the New Hampshire Governor

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Book Reviews

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"Mathematical Tools for Data Mining: Set Theory, Partial Orders, Combinatorics, Second Edition by Dan A Simovici and Chabane Djeraba” | Mathematical Association of America Book Reviews

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“Mathematical Demography, Selected Papers, 2nd Revised Edition, by David P. Smith and Nathan Keyfitz, Edited by Kenneth W Wachter and Herve Le Bras” | Mathematical Association of America Book Reviews

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“In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations that Changed the World by Ian Stewart” | Mathematical Association of America Book Reviews

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"Calculus: An Active Approach with Projects by Hilbert, Schwartz, Seltzer, Maceli, and Robinson" | Mathematical Association of America Book Reviews

 

“Quantify! A Crash Course in Smart Thinking by Göran Grimvall” | Mathematical Association of America Book Reviews

 

“Linear Models in Statistics by NH Bingham and John M Fry” | Mathematical Association of America Book Reviews

 

“Networks: An Introduction by MEJ Newman" | Mathematical Association of America Book Reviews

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