I Don't Do Math: Ann Piché Closing Exhibition Panel Discussion

Join artist Ann Piché and Andrew Fiss for an interdisciplinary discussion marking the close of the exhibition. They will reflect on the themes of “I don’t do math,” and the on-going conversations the project seeks to inspire.

“I don’t do math” is a photographic series referencing dyscalculia, a learning difference affecting a person’s ability to understand and manipulate number-based information. The exhibition will be accompanied by pedagogical information and activities for visitors and students, as well as an artist talk and two panel discussions.

This initiative seeks to raise awareness about the challenges posed by dyscalculia with educators, fellow mathematicians, and parents, and to normalize its existence, leading to early detection and augmented support. In addition, it seeks to reflect on and question broader issues and assumptions about the role and significance of Mathematics and Math education in today’s changing socio-cultural and economic contexts.

Photographer Ann Piché is using her artistic practice both to document the struggles experienced by people affected by dyscalculia, and to educate math educators, students, and parents about its effects and potential support strategies. In this proposed exhibition, she will present abstract images accompanied by their mathematical formulae. The images visually translate unfamiliar mathematical equations into something familiar - the photograph. Images and formulas aim to transmit the frustration dyscalculics must feel living in a number-centric world. The accompanying text-based panels guide the viewer through the assumptions and the difficulties that people affected by dyscalculia must face. The proposed series will consist of 15 large photographs and 5 text-based panels, including work produced during fieldwork visits in Prof. Amenda Chow and Prof. Sarah Mayes Tang’s Calculus and Symmetry classes; Prof. Pam Sargent’s business calculus class (all three professors are from the dept. of Math.); Prof. Ida Chan’s pre-calculus class (dept. of Math., York University); and Pamela Brittain’s K-12 and curriculum education program (OISE).

More information about the events and the participants. To RSVP please visit https://uoft.me/nc-i-dont-do-math-exhibition. 

Meet the Guest Speaker:

Andrew Fiss works at the intersections of STC (scientific & technical communication) and STS (science, technology, and society), and writes about unexpected texts held in college archives. His articles have appeared in the journals Science & Education, the History of Education Quarterly, New York History, Peitho, Configurations, The Mathematical Intelligencer, and Technical Communication Quarterly. His book, Performing Math: A History of Communication and Anxiety in the American Mathematics Classroom (Rutgers, 2021), uses archival research to argue that we must understand mathematics as communication-based, particularly in light of Americans’ widespread math hatred and high rates of math anxiety. Looking to historical developments in higher education, it brings together nineteenth-century instructions for reading mathematics textbooks, manuals for speaking at the blackboard, debates about written testing, with student funerals for mathematics textbooks and student-written mathematical plays.

This initiative is supported by JHI Program for the Arts, the ArtSci Salon & the Fields Institute, and New College. Many thanks to the Departments of Mathematics at the University of Toronto and York University for their collaboration.