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tch Michael J. Dorff's A Thing of Beauty video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0jxX67ghPA Read the speech here: https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/michael-dorff_seeing-things-differently/ Read more about Michael J. Dorff here: https://speeches.byu.edu/speakers/michael-dorff/ Subscribe to BYU Speeches for the latest videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgXbCVJ79-JVyHoBIDhpvEQ Read and listen to more BYU Speeches here: https://speeches.byu.edu/ Follow BYU Speeches: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/byuspeeches Twitter: https://twitter.com/byuspeeches Instagram: https://instagram.com/byuspeeches Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/byuspeeches © Brigham Young University. All rights reserved. I have a confession. I have been wondering whether I should admit this to such a large crowd, but here we go. My confession is that I love mathematics! I know that for some of you, the word math brings a flood of bad memories. So before people get up to leave, let me share with you a different way to see math. Seeing Beauty Unfortunately, many people have the mistaken idea that math is just a set of rules and calculations. That is not mathematics. My family and I love the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament. Sitting around with friends and watching an underdog team beat a highly favored team with a last-second desperation shot is exciting. Compare such a thrilling basketball game to being alone in a gym shooting hundreds and hundreds of free throws. If all I ever did were to shoot free throws over and over all by myself and never play or watch a real game of basketball, I wouldn’t like basketball. The same is true with math. Doing endless math drills is like shooting free throws over and over. It is not mathematics. To me, math can be like a game of strategy, such as The Settlers of Catan. Once you know the rules of the game, you can explore where the game can take you. In some ways math is like genealogy. You have several family lines to work on, and you may get stuck. But then a new piece of information opens up a previously blocked family line. You get excited and new results are uncovered. The same happens with mathematics. You could be working at the Disney Research Group using math to create realistic-looking hair in the movie Moana, you could be designing a new method for Netflix to determine what movies a subscriber would like, or you could even be working on an abstract math problem that uncovers new results, such as finding a fast algorithm to determine whether or not a number is prime. That is how I see math and why I love it. To me, mathematics is beautiful. Now, the world has many beautiful things. Watching a rising full moon peek over the Wasatch Mountains on a dark winter night, sitting outside on a New Hampshire fall evening while savoring poetry by Robert Frost, listening to the Vienna Philharmonic perform Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9 in D Minor in the 150-year-old neoclassical Wiener Musikverein concert hall—all of these things are beautiful to me. Likewise, mathematics is beautiful. Some of you may think I am crazy. Remember, when I think of math, I am not talking about the endless drills that you probably did in high school. When people ask me what research I do, I say that I study the math of soap bubbles. These bubbles are actually soap films that are formed by dipping wires or frames into a bucket of soapy water. To me, these soap films are fascinating—the shapes they take, the way they reflect light, their fragile nature. They relate to mathematical shapes known as minimal surfaces. There is a harmony between the shapes soap films take in nature and the mathematics behind minimal surfaces. I study the mathematics related to this and find it beautiful. I encourage you to explore how mathematics is different than a set of rules and calculations. Seeing with a Different Perspective In much the same way that I hope you will begin to see mathematics in a different and positive way, I want my students to see me, as their professor, in a different and positive way. Some students are afraid of their professors, especially their math professors. On the first day of the semester, I tell my class that students often ask how they should address me. Should they call me Professor Dorff or Dr. Dorff or Brother Dorff? When I tell them that I want them to call me Coach Dorff, they look a bit puzzled. I tell them that I want them to see me as their math coach—someone who is there to guide them and help them succeed, just like a sports coach would do. I want them to see me not as someone who is trying to fail them but as someone who is trying to help them succeed. I want them to see me differently.