> <i>Christopher is an inmate in a high-security federal prison not far from Atlanta. He’s been in trouble with the law since he was 14. He didn’t finish high school, had an addiction to hard drugs, and at age 21, his involvement in a string of armed robberies landed him in prison with a 32-year sentence.</i><p>> <i>Right now, you’ve probably formed a mental image of who Christopher is, and you might be wondering why I’m opening my speech with his story. When you think about who does mathematics–both who is capable of doing mathematics and who wants to do mathematics–would you think of Christopher?</i><p>Francis Su's retiring address as the President of the Mathematical Association of America is one of the most powerful things I've ever seen.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEtDvc1SWm8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEtDvc1SWm8</a><p>There's a transcript on his blog, too:<p><a href="https://mathyawp.wordpress.com/2017/01/08/mathematics-for-human-flourishing/" rel="nofollow">https://mathyawp.wordpress.com/2017/01/08/mathematics-for-hu...</a>
I am all for knowledge for knowledge's sake, and these guys are doing an <i>amazing</i> job not only teaching these convicts about important, perhaps even life-changing, math concepts, and by donating their ever-shrinking and increasingly valuable time, something that is in very limited supply in todays age.<p>But, as I am currently finding out in my life, the odds are <i>very slim to none</i> that life post-prison is going to change for these convicts as they try to rejoin society, as the job markets will be almost totally closed off to them as they seem to be for me.<p>Even with all this "enlightened" rhetoric here on HN about second-chances and "understanding the struggle", <i>not one person here has contacted me about remote work</i> even though I have make it very clear how desperate my situation is [0]. Please don't misunderstand...I don't really expect anyone to have much sympathy for my situation, but I know plenty of people here are currently looking for IT workers and my posting clearly show I am capable of doing high-quality LAMP work, so I think it's at least notable to discuss my experience.<p>It's all well and good to provide education and such to people in seek it, and its a great feel-good-story with wonderful social signaling for all you comfortable techies, but the reality is that <i>food and shelter costs real money</i>, and all the education in the world isn't going to help these ex-cons find work, build self-esteem and rejoin society if the common prejudices continue to work against them at every turn.<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14017760" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14017760</a>
Reminds me of high school dropout buddies who couldn't math at all, yet would compute weed ratios, prices in fake currencies on the fly while bantering. Irony.
<a href="http://blogs.ams.org/phdplus/files/2017/05/Wali-and-Brandon.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.ams.org/phdplus/files/2017/05/Wali-and-Brandon....</a><p>This poster presentation of non-Euclidean geometry is really one of the best demonstrations that I've ever seen of these ideas. The precision and clarity of the hand drawn figures is lovely.