The Big Project

Whew! I really needed this weekend. Three days of Leadership Skills training followed by the first day of an audit to renew our Chinese export license will do that to you. I still have Audit Days 2 and 3 coming up tomorrow and Tuesday, but it's been nice to have a break before those came along.

A few weeks ago, I started writing the first of my Mathematical Biographies, the project my publisher pitched to me at last year's California Homeschool Conference. While I was wrapping up The Eyes of the Enemy over the past year, I was also researching mathematicians, trying to find the right mix of people and mathematical ideas. An overarching theme began to emerge as I explored the possibilities, one that came from watching the world around me as much as it did from my research.

I knew I wanted a diverse set of subjects, and my publisher did too. Various news events have convinced me it was the right decision. My current plan covers thirteen subjects over nine books. Of those thirteen, only five are white, straight, Christian men, and of those five, only one is American. And even that doesn't cover the full range of people I'd like to cover, but there's only so much one author can do, especially one who writes as slowly as I do. If I do a good job and the series gets a good reception, maybe I'll do more.

The other idea that took shape fairly quickly has to do with the mathematical subjects I covered. I didn't just want to pick the mathematical basics. I wanted an overarcing theme, one that had a greater significance. And so, the nine books I have planned are all related to mathematical subjects that will be needed in the twenty-first century. I want to introduce kids to the mathematical tools they'll need to work on things like, say, climate change. That means I'll have to find ways of explaining some rather advanced stuff to middle schoolers - but I don't have to teach them how to do it. I just have to give them a taste, to see if any of them are interested enough to explore it on their own. I checked with my publisher on that, and he told me to go for it, so I'm going to give it a shot.

And so, here's my plan. One reason I'm writing it all out here is so I can come back later and see how much the plan changed. That will be interesting.

			The first book covers Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat, who developed the basic theory of probability through a series of letters they exchanged in 1654. I call them, "The Probability Pen Pals."
			Next comes Florence Nightingale - famous for her invention of the modern-day nursing profession, but also a skilled statistician who developed new ways of presenting data to affect public policy.
			David Blackwell was one of the first African-American Mathematics PhD's. He became one of the leading experts on "game theory," and studied some very dangerous "games" during the Cold War.
			Ada Lovelace was the only legitimate child of England's Lord Byron. She worked with inventor Charles Babbage on his mechanical "Difference Engine," and is today considered to be the first computer programmer.
			Benoit Mandelbrot had to hide from the Nazis during World War II, but he went on to develop Fractal Geometry, a field that has revolutionized the way we see the universe.
			American meteorologist Edward Lorenz tried to take a shortcut on his computer simulation in the early 1960s, and wound up discovering Chaos Theory. He's the person who coined the term, "the butterfly effect."
			Medieval merchant's son Leonardo Fibonacci was in northern Africa for his father's business, and brought back the Hindu-Arabic number system we all use today. Much of his book Liber abaci drew on the work of Muslim scholars like Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a pioneer in algebra.
			Indian Srinivasa Ramanujan was a self-taught genius, whose notebooks are still yielding new secrets almost a century later. The man who brought him to England, G.H. Hardy, later wrote an essay apologizing to the British public for wasting their tax dollars on a field of study he found fascinating but thought was useless - a field that in modern times has become essential to e-commerce!
			Hungarian-born Paul Erdös spent most of his life traveling the world doing mathematics, becoming the greatest mathematical collaborator of all time. His work furthered many careers and made many discoveries, driven mainly by the sheer passion for doing it.

I've got ideas for more fiction tucked away, including a book that's about one-third of the way done, but this will be my primary writing effort for a while. It should be quite a ride.