The picture below was taken in college when I was around my heaviest weight ever of 314 lbs. I’ve always been a big person and I there is a lot that goes into why this is the case as well. Was it the way I was raised? Was it genetics? Was it just me eating myself into a hole? Well, this is not the place where I’m going to talk about that.
What I will say, though, is that this is the most recent picture of me a little over 70 lbs lighter than I was at my highest weight. This is a blog post about math, so I’ll let you figure out my approximate current weight on your own.
With all of that out of the way, I’ll tell you what this blog post is really about. I don’t really like talking about myself because I’m generally a very self-conscious person. But this weekend I was thinking about what I might be able to do to share my weight loss journey with my students. And the file below was created. It’s a series of problems that I’ve created for my classes — one problem per class.
There’s problem for Linear Algebra, Calculus, Statistics, Beginning Algebra, and Math for Education. The best part for me is that every problem asks a question about the same data set. And it’s all based around the premise that I have a short-term weight loss goal that I’m trying to meet of 225 lbs by October 31, 2013.
Maybe this is a little bit over the top for what you might be willing to use with your own classroom, but it’s definitely a big step forward for me in talking about my weight loss publicly. If I can’t talk about this with my students, what can I talk about, then? Some of the fat jokes that I used to use in class don’t really work anymore. Hey now!
