This story is a long, wandering one. Someday, if I get the privilege to meet you, I’ll buy you a glass of wine and bore you to sleep with the details.
For now, I’ll give you the gist.
Two years ago today we went to the Houston Museum of Natural Science to see the “Pirates” exhibition. We ended our visit in the gift shop. When we were in the book store I heard a strange voice.
I looked down and saw a math dictionary.
It repeated itself, “Bon! Stop blogging about goofy stuff and start a website about math. You know you’re supposed to. Quit avoiding it.”
Since I’d never had a book speak to me before, I purchased it.
Who knows what I told Husband at the time. I probably didn’t mention that math books were talking to me. <crazy!>
I bought the book and went home and purchased the domain name www.MathIsNotAFourLetterWord.com.
Luckily for the typing fingers of the parents around the world, I soon shortened the url to www.MathFour.com.
I’ve done a lot in two years.
The goal of Math Is Not a Four Letter Word is to help parents see the math in the world around them and say it out loud to their kids.
To this end, I’ve done the following:
- Teamed with Wil Devine, LPC as the Research Guy.
- Created a free online website called That’s Math! with a super focus on giving parents exactly what math to say about the world around them.
- Promoted math on various other sites
- Promoted math like a lunatic on Twitter
And I’m just getting started!
My ten year goal is this: to get parents to treat math talk like they treat reading. Do it early. Do it frequently. And do it with a smile.
What’s next…
On the docket for this year is
- More content and promotion for That’s Math!
- Infographics (almost done with the first)
- Writing for more sites (especially educational ones)
- Promoting math like a lunatic on Pinterest and Facebook
- Monetizing the site
That last one might seem a little out of place. And it was hard to decide on.
But I have a family and giving out free content doesn’t pay the bills. In fact, if I don’t pay the bills, I won’t have time to give out free content.
So I’m going to be selling ads and sponsored posts — but you’ll know it when I do. I won’t do anything sneaky or weird.
And there’s a book in the future!
And the big thing is there’s a Kindle book to come out this quarter. I’ll be setting up a survey to solicit your input — I’m writing it for you!
So start thinking about what you’d like to see in a book. If you want to share your ideas before I get the survey out, feel free to leave them in the comments.
Thanks for a great two years — I’m looking forward to more!
Share your thoughts in the comments or on twitter/x. And don’t forget to pin this on Pinterest!