Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 15:41:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: Sonya Del Tredici <sonya@mathforum.org>
To: All Dr. Math Doctors
Subject: Doctor Math in June
MIME-Version: 1.0

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Doctor Math in June
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Hello Math Doctors, and welcome to the real first month of summer! Even 
if you're not on the U.S. public school calendar, you may have noticed a 
drop in questions in Triage. As soon as summer school kicks in, though, 
we're sure to see quite a bit of action.  And speaking of action, here is 
the quantitative evaluation of Doctor Math for the month of June:

     Questions Asked: 2250
  Questions Answered: 1200
    Percent answered:  53%

As you can all see, we received many fewer questions this month than we 
have all school year.

Our recruiting efforts continue to pay off, and we have 13 new 
volunteers: Doctors Ameis, Shipman, Kadee, Christine, Minnie, Erra, 
Stuart, Floor, Kimberly, Shala, Margaret, Tchen, and Becky. 

I also wanted to give special thanks to several folks who have gone above 
and beyond the call of duty when it comes to Doctor Math. They are the 
ones who keep us running, from the coldest bleakest Februarys to the warm 
and hectic days of finals, and they've written about half of the answers 
that went out this past month. Some have been with us since the service 
began, and others have just joined. They are Doctors Anthony, Jeremiah, 
Jerry, Pat, Peterson, Rob, Schwa, and Wilkinson.  All of us administrators 
thank you very much.

Not having a consistent theme for this little newsletter, I thought this 
month I'd just talk a bit about who you all are. You see, in my mind "The 
Math Doctors" are a cohesive group of people, many of whom I correspond 
with almost every day. However, I know that you don't know each other, so 
I thought I'd do some introductions. To begin to get to know the 
wonderful group that you are part of, take a look at some of the Math 
Doctors' Web pages. Some are very personal (check out the great picture 
on Dr. Nick's page), and some are very professional (look at Dr. Terrel's 
math pages). You can get a list of all usernames and real names with Web 
pages at:

   http://mathforum.org/dr.office/list_doct.pl

From an unscientifically unrandom sample of Math Doctors, I found out the 
following facts. As you may have guessed, many of us are present and 
former Swarthmore students, as well as undergraduates and graduates at 
the University of Arkansas, U.C. San Marcos, Brigham Young, U. Chicago, 
Bates, Cornell, Oakland U. (in Michigan), Princeton, Miami U., and Essex 
University (in England), just to name a few.

We are also college and university professors. My sample revealed 
professors at the U. of Manitoba, Swarthmore, Virginia Tech, Ewha Womans 
University in Korea, the U.S. Naval Academy, Harvard, and Middlesex 
Community College in Massachusetts.

We are elementary and high school teachers from Ohio, New York, 
Tennessee, California, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, and Texas, as 
well as high school students from all over.

Those from my sample not working in schools identified themselves as 
software developers, mothers of 6 (actually, there was only one mother of 
6), chemists, electrical engineers, and physicists.

We are also an international crowd, logging on from Denmark, Japan, 
Germany, El Salvador, France, England, Singapore, Korea, and India.

I want to keep this newsletter short, so I am going to stop there. I do 
encourage you to look each other up. If you see an answer in Post-Op that 
particularly interests you, write the author to discuss it. If you 
notice one doctor's brilliant number theory answers, write her about that 
really interesting question on Fibonacci that no one has gotten around to 
answering. You math doctors are the most important thing Doctor Math 
has, with an incredible depth and breadth of talents, and I don't want to 
be the only one who gets to take advantage of that.

As I always have, I'll end this letter with some thank-you notes.  Have a 
lovely July, everyone.

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Hey, 

I don't know who answered my last question but I wanted to thank you 
all for the wonderful job that you did. The information that you all 
gave to me has helped me out a lot and I am sure that you all have helped 
many others. I just wanted to say thank you all and keep
up the good work.
   Thank you,
               Jennifer

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I Just think with this program a lot of kids can boost up their grades by 
getting help. Like if they're having trouble, if they're failing, or just not 
paying attention, and they have a question, they can ask you and know 
they will get great results, I should try to start like a little thing for
ages 5 to 10 or something, you have inspired kids and I know you can 
help!  You're great. Thanx for listening.

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--Sonya Del Tredici
  The Math Forum
  sonya@mathforum.org