Equity and inclusion are good for math, and America

Taraji P. Henson's portrayal of Katherine Johnson
dumbfounds the white establishment.

A favorite go-to movie in my math class is the 2018 film, Hidden Figures. It is a great film for math class, because it tells the story of incredible people using the tools they had to think outside the box, to solve a real life challenge. The challenge the film recreates takes place at NASA in the 1940s, when our country's best engineers were racing the Russians to space during the cold war tensions. The mathematics of predicting the motion of a object as it moves from a parabolic path, a launch, to an elliptical path, orbit and back again didn't exist. It was invented/discovered by the now less hidden, Katherine Johnson. 

The movie highlights the excellence of her and other black women who were the literal calculators launching America into space, while living under the male dominated world of NASA, and the dramatic racial oppression of the late Jim-Crow era. 

Dr. Taimina's beautiful crocheted models of
hyperbolic planes launched new fields of study.
 

Another mathematical hero of mine I share with my students is Dr. Daina Taimina, a retired Professor of Mathematics at Cornell University. Her groundbreaking work used crochet to conceptualize hyperbolic geometry, illuminating a problem that had baffled two millennia of mathematicians, including myself. 

Her solution took the best drawing that the best mathematicians since Euclid could muster (line drawing at the left), and demonstrated that an ages old craft (and coral reef) have been comfortably demonstrating hyperbolic planes in the living rooms of craftswomen the entire time.

Win Win Win

Historically, people of color, and women have been both implicitly, and explicitly denied access to top education in mathematics and engineering. The simple point I make to my students is that these two women mathematicians are shining examples of what happens when barriers to mathematics are overcome. It is not just that their personal lives were improved, but in fact through their ingenuity, they actively moved forward our understanding of the world. 

Efforts for equity and inclusion are not just about improving individual outcomes. In fact, we are ALL better off when we are all included.

Katherine Johnson and @DainaTaimina featured in my #endoftheyear activities - powerful reminders that representation, equity and inclusion aren't just to make us feel good - we're literally smarter when we're #AllIncluded #ITeachMath @IndianaAreaSD pic.twitter.com/1dToXEdwaA

— Gerald Smith (@mrgesmith) June 4, 2021