Dr. Asia Rose Matthews, PhD: Mathematician / Mother / Recreational Pianist / Grower of Many Jade Plants

The Scene:

We are in Powell River, BC, Canada in Asia’s home, somewhere between the sewing machine in the living room and the Instapot in the kitchen. This interview required three different recordings to be spliced together, and another bajillion (technical math term) edits for its’ equation to sum up to its’ solution. (I probably misused those terms and it’s making Asia cringe :). She was born in a trailer in my driveway and became a female PhD Mathematician (pretty good odds). Join us for the way conversations go when you’re a family of four...plus one cousin.

Highlights:

• Quilting to teach students about math patterns
• Questioning everything - “to be a mathematician is to be skeptical”
• Scientific theories are falsifiable, mathematics is verifiable - “Truthiness”
• “Bajillion” is a technical term
• Equations are very little of theoretical math
• Equals is a very powerful operation
• Formulas are a description of a pattern
• Math is abstract, imaginary, creative and explores boundaries
• Being a Mathematician makes you a good communicator - you must convince others that what you say is true
• Mathematician in residence at an all-girls school in Victoria
• Mathematics Association of America Grant
• Crocheting hyperbolic surfaces
• Using your hands to understand what is happening
• Paper chains to understand Mobius strips
• The war between precision and wabi-sabi
• Consciously creating less structure
• The problem with North American Puritanical roots
• Seeking patterns and order as a child, loving algorithms
• Seeing that math needed to be taught differently
• When you’re afraid of being wrong, you can’t learn
• Teaching at a liberal arts college in Squamish - classes of no more than 20
• Being passionate about how math is communicated between people
• Exciting the non math-oriented
• Wanting to teach teachers in order to make the biggest difference
• Using the word “exponential” incorrectly
• Please don’t say “square the circle”
• Mathematics is “the best” science
• There is a strong connection between mind and heart
• The same trait helping professionally and harming personally
• Fast brains, spitballing through conversation
• We take on what we’re already good at (and forget to develop the rest)
• Putting yourself in unfamiliar situations to observe the reaction
• Adaptability and resilience
• Being curious and able to find joy in whatever you’re doing
• Mathematicians can get by with not great memory
• Forgetting how to be independent when you partner up
• Do you have to be any different than you are right now in order to be completely lovable?
• Do not say “1000 %” around mathematicians
• Square dancing with “the olds” (the perfect mathematical sport)
• Universal educational design
• Casually running a witch’s coven
• It is impossible to put yourself in someone else’s shoes
• We interact with the world based on the values we were taught
• Optimism in inclusively teaching different kinds of minds
• Cohabitation of ideas
• If time was linear…
• “Ah, interesting…”
• Anarchist math
• “Also: relax.”

A taste:

“I don’t quite believe that I’m worthy without having to prove it. I certainly can prove that I’m worthy, but I’m not sure I believe it without that proof."

Favorite line from a song:

“I was playing my guitar, lying underneath the stars, just thanking the lord for my fingers.” - Paul Simon