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Math Workshop: Complete Mathness!
October 10 was one of my favorite dates of the year 2014. I was invited to my own Alma Mater: The Army Public School, Dhaula Kuan to give a workshop on mathematics motivation. This was my first workshop and a very special one indeed. I got the chance to go back to the Raina Auditorium.
Never have I felt so many emotions together: nervousness, excitement, nostalgia, happiness, anxiety and that weird funny thing in the stomach.
I had prepared a power point presentation with really cool sides and lot of fun references like Big Bang theory, Bart Simpson, Video Games, Crime shows etc to make it interactive.
They all were ready to be math rockstars!
a lot “Oooo’s” came on seeing Benedict Cumberbatch on screen !
Video games! This interested them the most
Mathematics is definitely a beautiful subject but you don’t hear that from much people, why?
Because people are afraid of mathematics!
Again, why?
This was the main question which had to be addressed. And I did. I made them go back to their junior classes when math was not that bad. So when and more importantly, how it became so scary? There was a reason. I will write about that in full detail in another blog soon.
A large number of students are very afraid of mathematics. So my main challenge was to make them listen to me and the best way to do that was to make them laugh.
I definitely had tried to keep my workshop an interactive one, lot of questions, lot of experiences shared but I made sure I could make them laugh in between because that was when they realized that I have been one of them. I probably still I am.
Math bringing laughter! 🙂
In the end, the workshop went well, they enjoyed a lot and so did I. I am yet to learn more, but this was one of the best opportunities till now in my life and I have to thank my very own mathematics teacher Mahajan Ma’am for giving me that. There are some people in my life that made me fall in love with this subject. She is definitely one of those.
Mahajan Ma’am 🙂
A token of thanks gifted to me 😀
I will write about the main content of the workshop soon in the next blog soon. 🙂
That is it from me.
Go Mathness!
Love
N
The birth of Dr. Isomorpheus!
Oh, sweet! It has been a year! Seems like yesterday, though! Happy Birthday, Dr. Isomorpheus!
I never knew we will come this far: 129 comics, 3600+ readers on Facebook, 3 exhibition stalls, 1 newspaper interview and several mentions on social media.
Dr. Isomorpheus wasn’t started to inspire people to do math. It may or may not have done it, it may do it in the future, but it wasn’t meant to do so. It was a just-for-fun activity.
On a hot April 2013 afternoon, I finally opened the comic making website – Pixton, which Nishika had been asking me to look at. I signed up, logged in, learnt about making comics and created a character that looked like me. I had to make a comic now. Purely by chance (non-uniform randomness), I decided to make a math comic. Ofcourse, my love towards mathematics provided an inclination to do so. I picked up a popular joke and made “Dr. Isomorpheus and 9D!”. I showed the comic to Nishika, got a positive response and published it on my personal profile.
Very soon, I had a dozen comics on my profile but the response was mixed. Nishika asked me to make a page for these comics so that I could get a bigger audience. On May 20, 2013, I made the page and got Nishika onboard because she had been a constant supporter of the comics. I had no clue about how she would have been able to help me. Very soon, she started showing her skills in making new jokes, creating new designs, making posters, bringing in new ideas, The Mathalympics and everything you need in a creative team-mate. I was happy as I saw Dr. Isomorpheus by Hitesh Gakhar becoming Dr. Isomorpheus by Hitesh Gakhar and Nishika Bhatia.
We teamed up exactly a year back and we are still going strong. There are lots of things we have planned for near and distant future which includes seminars in high schools, making animation movies, lecture series, comic books, etc. Keep following and sharing!
LOL(Lots of Love)
Hitesh
PS: I am adding a few interesting things about Dr. Isomorpheus:
- The name “Dr. Isomorpheus” was coined by Hitesh while making a gag for something else a month before the first comic. Isomorpheus was derived from Morpheus from the movie- Matrix.
- Epsilly was created a year before Dr. Isomorpheus by Nishika for her mathematics newsletter- Mathletics.
- The most liked comic on facebook is “Dr. Isomorpheus goes shopping!” with 231 likes.
- Our major promotions/helps in the beginning were by Urban Fictionary and Bhak Sala.
- Dr. Isomorpheus is India’s first mathematics webcomic series.
Dr. Isomorpheus 