Let me start with a little story.
At my day job, I get some “use it or lose it” leave days. Last year, I gifted myself some three day weekends at the end of the semester. I know I spent one weekend visiting my friend who lives at the beach and I really don’t remember what I did with the other two Mondays I took. After those lovely long weekends, I was wondering what to do with my final leave day when my friend and mentor Bethany announced she was hosting a Podcast Party. I bet you are wondering what in the world a podcast party is…it’s a zoom call where she walks you through all the essential steps of creating a podcast. From designing the cover graphic to recording the trailer to setting up the description and getting connected to the platform, participants go from zero to podcast in a few hours on a random Wednesday afternoon.
Before she marketed this Podcast Party, did I have aspirations of becoming a podcaster? Maybe it had been a flicker of an idea at one point or another, but no. I had never seriously considered this would be on my path. BUT…I have a good friend who says everybody has a big but (b-u-t)…I had just recently had some ideas around what it takes to be a math person and had started sharing those ideas on social media and I thought, what if I take those little ideas and turn them into podcast episodes?
I decided to try it out and took my final leave day for the academic year on May 7, 2025 so I could attend live and by the end of the Podcast Party, I See Math People was on Spotify and Apple podcasts! The first episode posted the following Monday and sometimes I still can’t believe I did it. As it turns out, I enjoyed it so much I decided to return for another season this year.
If you joined in on the fun of the podcast (and here on the blog) last year, thank you, thank you, thank you! I love the conversations that came from those first episodes and posts and I hope you will stick around! If you are new around here, Welcome! I’m so honored you chose to hear my message. Sometimes, I resist checking out a new-to-me podcast because I somehow think I have to start at the beginning. I don’t know where that comes from, but if that’s how you feel, too, it’s really not necessary. While I reference a previous episode or post from time to time, each one stands on its own.
{Side Note}
If you’d like to jump back and check out some of the content, though, I’d recommend starting with Episode 1 – Math is Ubiquitous and Episode 2 – Math in One Word and then maybe skipping to a couple of others that are topics you are interested in. If you’d rather read the posts, you can see them here (1) and here (2). Of course, if you want to binge listen or read the whole season, I’m not going to stop you!
{Back to the story}
Most of the first 27 episodes and posts center around a specific interest or activity…like art, cooking, games, or vacation planning…and I dip a toe into some of the mathematical ideas involved. A few episodes dive into specific concepts and how you might use them in your daily life, sometimes without even noticing. Things like comparing, using rates, and patterns. Woven through every episode is a mindset message. Specifically, the idea that since you interact with math every day, you are a math person.
You see, that is the underlying message of I See Math People. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard people of all ages say the words, “I’m just not a math person.” I bet you’ve said them yourself at some point. Maybe that’s even why you are listening today.
I believe part of the reason I am here on this planet is to bring awareness that everyone is a math person…that YOU are a math person. My view is that it is absolutely impossible to be a human and NOT be a math person, because math is everywhere. It’s so much more than what happens in school. And I don’t believe your math class experience has anything to do with your status as a math person. The podcast (and blog) is one way to get my message out to more people. To have an impact outside the walls of the classrooms I’ve led. To help you start to realize you interact with mathematical ideas every day.
Maybe this is enough for you to get curious about your mindset and how it impacts the choices you make.
Why is this important to me? I spent years sitting through school conferences listening to parents say they were never good at math and didn’t expect their kids to be either. That never sat well with me. Then in graduate school, somewhere around 2015, I learned that a big chunk of people who dropped out of college did so because they couldn’t pass the required math courses. That hit me like a gut punch. And I don’t think it was just because I’m a math teacher. More recently, I’ve been advising college students and I found that some were also choosing or changing their career goals based on their relationship with math…meaning they are looking for degree programs that have the fewest math requirements. One of my most favorite things to do is help people determine what they really want and then support them in getting there, so it is absolutely not okay with me that people give up on their dreams because they don’t believe they are capable of understanding the math involved.
I believe when we shift a mindset toward something, the way we see that thing changes. I’m on a mission here to change the way math is perceived…not because it will benefit math, but because it will benefit you. If shifting your mindset around your relationship with math gives you just enough confidence to go after those dreams or makes you pause before you tell your children they won’t be good at math because you aren’t, the old cycle stops and a new more empowering cycle begins.
I went through some boxes of old stuff recently and came across a book I forgot I had. It’s called G is for Googol. No, not the search engine that’s become a verb, but g-o-o-g-o-l, which is the name for the number 10 raised to the 100th power. G is for Googol is an alphabet book of math ideas and as I flipped through it, I thought this idea would be fun in podcast form. And, since I add the text from my episodes here, fun on the blog as well.
While the inspiration for this series came from the book, that’s as far as it goes. I won’t be presenting any part of the book here and I’m not even taking any of the math ideas directly from it. I’ll take you through the alphabet, one letter per episode/post…and we’ll explore three or four mathematical ideas you probably use on a regular basis, each one beginning with that letter.
Are you ready to get started? I’m really excited to be here with you and I love that you are joining me! Thanks for listening and we will get started in the next episode with math ideas that begin with the letter “a.”
What do you think we will talk about?
I’m so glad you joined the conversation today! I’m on a mission to change the way the world sees math, and that starts with you. If you found value in this post, if something you read made you pause, or if you suddenly realized the hidden math in something you do every day, now is your chance to join the movement!
How can you help? When you subscribe to, rate, and share I See Math People or A Pocketfulof Pi, more people will see it and the more people who get the message, the more mindsets can begin to shift. That, my friend, is how movements gain momentum.
Thank you so much for reading today! I hope you are as excited as I am to explore the alphabet through a mathematical lens.
I’m Jennifer Mason Hardin and everywhere I look I see math people just like you.
