#### Posts

2019-05-16: Glow worms return

2019-04-11: Original memetic sin

2019-01-31: The theory of weight

2018-11-06: Origins of telephone network theory

2018-10-24: Modern thought

2018-09-10: Feeding a controversy

2018-06-11: Glow worm distribution

2018-04-23: Outlawing risk

2017-08-22: A rebuttal on the beauty in applying math

2016-11-02: In search of Theodore von Karman

2016-09-25: Amath Timeline

2016-02-24: Math errors and risk reporting

2016-02-20: Apple VS FBI

2016-02-19: More Zika may be better than less

2016-01-14: Life at the multifurcation

2015-09-28: AI ain't that smart

2015-06-24: MathEpi citation tree

2015-03-31: Too much STEM is bad

2015-03-24: Dawn of the CRISPR age

2015-02-08: Risks and values of microparasite research

2014-11-10: Vaccine mandates and bioethics

2014-10-18: Ebola, travel, president

2014-10-12: Ebola numbers

2014-09-23: More stochastic than?

2014-08-17: Feynman's missing method for third-orders?

2014-07-31: CIA spies even on congress

2014-07-16: Rehm on vaccines

2014-06-20: Random dispersal speeds invasions

2014-04-14: More on fairer markets

2014-02-17: Is life a simulation or a dream?

2014-01-30: PSU should be infosocialist

2014-01-12: The dark house of math

2013-12-24: Cuvier and the birth of extinction

2013-12-17: Risk Resonance

2013-12-15: The cult of the Levy flight

2013-12-09: 2013 Flu Shots at PSU

2013-12-02: Amazon sucker-punches 60 minutes

2013-11-26: Zombies are REAL, Dr. Tyson!

2013-11-22: Crying wolf over synthetic biology?

2013-11-21: Tilting Drake's Equation

2013-11-18: Why $1^\infty != 1$

2013-11-14: 60 Minutes misreport on Benghazi

2013-11-09: Using infinitessimals in vector calculus

2013-11-08: Functional Calculus

## The dark house of math

When I was in high school, I saw a NOVA episode about Fermat's last theorem and it's final proof. In there, Andrew Wile gave a quote about how doing math was like wondering around a dark house. It made a big impression on me, and a few years ago (fall, 2010) when I was trying to explain some things to one of my classes, I embellished on the idea to try to give them some feeling for research. It's phrased in terms of math, and could also be applied to scientific pursuits, but I think all of us can recognize some of our experiences in the idea.

Studying mathematics is like walking into an unfamiliar house on "a dark and stormy night" when everything has lost power. At first, it's just empty and dark. You know your in the house but you cannot see or feel anything. You start to move through the house just like you would your normal house like you know where you are going. For a moment, you feel like your at home. But as you start to walk, you start to bump into things: your toes get stubbed on things you didn't see, you can not tell doors from walls... After bumping into a few things, you start to get a little scared, lost, and confused. You hesitate. You realize you don't know where you are, and that this house is DIFFERENT from your house, that things are in different places, and that you might get hurt if do the wrong thing.

And we all start to act a little differently. Those of us here for the first time are at a total lose about what to do.

It would be great if you could find a light, BUT DON'T KNOW WHERE THE LIGHTS ARE! You might might panic a little, decide to back out of the house the way you came in. But that won't get you want you want, because you'll be back out in the storm and you'll still be lost if you try to go back in.

Some of us are fool-hard. We plow ahead like we know what we're doing, trusting to our luck will keep us from falling down the basement stairs before we find a light.

Sometimes somebody shows us the way. But sometimes there is nobody around.

So you start moving around the house a little more carefully. You take small steps, so that you don't stub your toes. You bump into things softly, and feel your way around them. Some of the things you bump into feel like chairs and tables, but some of them are unrecognizable. Eventually, we find some light switches or window shades, which help us find our way around the room. And now you can start to see how the pieces of the room puzzle fit together, and you check and find that some of your surmises were right, but others were wrong. But light switches for one room aren't of much in the next dark room. If you are really lucky, you find something like a flashlight, that you can take with you from room to room.

Doing research is finding more, better flashlights, maybe even with different colors.

Doing magic is hiding the flashlight and leading people around the house in the dark.

Doing teaching is handing out flashlights.