About

My name is Ben Orlin. I like math, jokes, and teaching. I can’t draw. That much you could probably guess.

These days, I live in Saint Paul, MN, and am very excited about my two books: Math with Bad Drawings (which came out last year) and Change is the Only Constant (coming Oct. 8, 2019).

Previously, I taught in Oakland, CA and Birmingham, UK, covering every level of mathematics from ages 12 to 18, with occasional spells teaching Psychology, Biology, English, Theory of Knowledge, and even Earth Science (the latter to no one’s benefit, least of all the Earth’s).

To email me, just use the name of the blog at gmail. Or follow me on Twitter or Facebook. I love to hear from readers, whether you stumbled here accidentally or are my college roommate Michael Wayne. (Hey, Michael Wayne!)

Here’s some coverage of CHANGE IS THE ONLY CONSTANT:

• The New Scientist called it “a cartoon triumph.”
• Math Frolic named it the Best Math Book of 2019.
• Award-winning math teacher Patrick Honner described it as “simultaneously high brow and goofy, deep and easy going, important and self-deprecating, but always fun and enlightening. In other words, it’s uniquely Ben Orlin.”
• BBC Science Focus published an excerpt titled Archimedes: Inventor of war machines and calculus (almost).
• Ars Technica featured an interview with me and a personality quiz I wrote to decide whether you are a Newton or a Leibniz.
• The podcasts Breaking Math and Culture Cafe graciously interviewed me.

Here’s some coverage of MATH WITH BAD DRAWINGS:

• Excerpts: What does math look like to mathematicians? (Popular Science); The Ten Types of People Who Buy Lottery Tickets (Vox)
• Reviews: Ars Technica; Hampshire Daily Gazette; 3 Quarks Daily; Math Frolic; American Scientist
• Interviews: Freakonomics Radio; Google Talks; Yale Alumni Magazine; Whad’Ya Know; The John and Heidi Show; Gonit Sora; Breaking Math; Read Science!; Inside the Black Box; WAMC Roundtable; Intelligence Unshackled

Here’s some of my stuff as it’s appeared at other web sites and publications:

• Vox: What journalists, weather forecasters, and Han Solo get wrong about probability
• Los Angeles Times: Why I Won’t Reenlist as a Yale Alumni Interviewer
• The Atlantic: When Memorization Gets in the Way of Learning
• The Atlantic: Why Do Private School Teachers Make Less Money?
• The Atlantic: How I Became an Unfair Teacher
• The Atlantic: I Lie About My Teaching
• Slate: You’re Not Stupid. You’re Slow. (Through syndication, this piece also appeared in the Chicago Tribune.)
• Slate: How to Fix the SAT: Give Out Fewer Scores
• Slate: We’re Giving the Wrong Dr. Seuss Book for Graduation
• Journal of Humanistic Mathematics: Nine Mathematical Ways of Watching a Baseball Game

And here are other interviews with me, in case you want to hear people ask the tough questions like “what’s wrong with your drawings” and “why Ben why”:

• WordPress Discover (wherein the gracious Ben Huberman somehow manages to suggest that I have an “acumen” of any kind)
• Math Frolic and Math Frolic again (wherein the wonderful Shecky calls me “Math Blogging’s Bill Watterson” – a horrible slander against the great Bill Watterson)
• Challenging Opinions Podcast (wherein the eminently fair William Campbell proposes that maybe I hire four-year-olds to do my drawings for me)
• Top Craft Bloggers Share Their Tips for Online Success (wherein I give a few quotes, despite the words “top” and “craft” being quite ill-suited to me)