Barry Brunson

Barry's checkered academic past

Barry attended Saint John's College (Annapolis), the University of California at Berkeley, and Indiana University Northwest (Gary), without ever graduating, before moving to Bloomington in 1975. There he finally received the BA, MA, and PhD degrees from Indiana University, finishing in 1982.

Barry's colorful employment history

Mixed in with his off-and-on career as a student, Barry worked, for months or for years, as a baker's helper, clerk, warehouseman, office manager, soldier, steelworker, taxi driver, and welder (among other occupations). He taught at DePauw University for two years before coming to Western Kentucky University in 1983. His mathematical specialty is probability theory, and he still does some research in that area. However, his main professional focus for the last several years has been curriculum reform in mathematics, and more generally, promoting mathematical and scientific literacy.

ATM

Barry was inspired by the amazing potential for deeper learning that Mathematica offers, both to students and to faculty alike. In particular, he was deeply impressed by the pioneering interactive courseware Calculus & Mathematica, written by Bill Davis, Horacio Porta, and Jerry Uhl. Over a period of several years, Barry and Claus Ernst wrote their own interactive courseware, Algebra, Trigonometry, & Mathematica (ATM), which is interactive courseware that helps students learn precalculus by doing mathematics instead of just reading about it. The power and flexibility of Mathematica enables the student to generate many examples from one initial example, and allows for individual investigation until a given concept is fully understood. The student is encouraged to ask "What if...?" and is empowered to find the answer almost immediately.

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ATM Online

Starting in the Fall semester of 1998, we occasionally have offered Math 118, College Algebra and Trigonometry, via the internet.