The last day of the year brings reflections on the past and hopes for the future. It was a good year with a rough start and a whirlwind finish. The delta and omicron strains of COVID required pivoting from our plans for a return to normal. But by summer, travel was back in full force and did not let up until right before the winter holiday season.
For 2022, the Math in the Time of Corona blog had fewer posts and fewer words than previous years, but more views and more likes. As is common this time of year, let’s revisit the top posts as determined by the number of views.
Honorable Mention: August 1 Day 876: Safe Journeys to MAA MathFest Everyone. MAA’s return to a large-scale in-person meeting.
#10: February 8 Day 702: Oral Midterms Again. This post considered the benefits of oral midterms in the in-person classroom. Spoiler alert: the biggest unanticipated benefit was having “the talk” in the moment rather than reaching out and being ignored by underperforming students.
#9: January 27 Day 690: I Changed My Mind. After posting on my preference to not talk about Wordle, I introduced the game to my students and it is was a wonderful, community building, problem solving exercise.
#8 March 12 Day 734: Section Reflection Thoughts and pictures from the MAA Southeastern Section meeting in Rome, GA–my first in-person MAA section meeting since February 2020. Attendance required proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test. There were remote options. It was very well executed.
#7: October 24 Part 3: I Don’t Want to Talk About It The third of four posts about a disastrous trip home from Newark Airport after the MAA NJ Section meeting in Atlantic City, NJ.
#6: March 8 Day 730: A Truly Hybrid Conference The 53rd Southeastern International Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory, and Computing in Boca Raton, FL was a beautiful example of a truly hybrid conference. In retrospect, it is what hybrid conferences should be but the expense for the additional support in terms of people and equipment is probably cost prohibitive.
#5: January 1 Day 664: In the New Year, I Can Do Better. Last year’s New Year’s message drew attention to a President’s message that I wrote for MAA Focus inspired by the Warren Zevon Song Don’t Let Us Get Sick.
#4: March 3 Day 725: Tacoma Mourns. A tribute to my friend and Tacoma icon Sue Kidd.
#3: July 24 Day 868: Your Opinions May Vary This post directs readers to an opinion piece that I wrote for the AMS Notices. It calls for metrics and rewards to align with institutional mission and values. While written for academic mathematicians, I believe it applies to all disciplines and institutions.
#2: September 23 Day 929: Celebrate and Play The NYC event where MAA recognized the United States Math Olympiad (USAMO), European Girls Math Olympiad (EGMO), and International Math Olympiad (IMO) winners and we remembered how games can be an important foil for mathematical thought.
#1: January 7 Day 670: Crap. Damn you Omicron. More last minute changes to teaching plans because of COVID developments. Arghhh!
Here’s hoping that 2023 is the year we can stop talking about COVID.
Math in the Time of Corona 