Keith Devlin

Key takeaways

Keith Devlin belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Keith Devlin to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Keith Devlin from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Keith J. Devlin (born 16 March 1947) is a British and American mathematician and professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is known for his work in mathematical cognition, information theory, and the public communication of mathematics. Devlin has authored more than 30 books and numerous scholarly articles. He was a regular commentator on National Public Radio (NPR) as “the Math Guy” and is the co-founder and President of BrainQuake, an educational technology company that develops mathematics learning games.

Education He was born and grew up in England, in Kingston upon Hull, where he attended Greatfield High School. Devlin earned a BSc (special) in mathematics at King's College London in 1968, and a mathematics PhD in logic at the University of Bristol in 1971 under the supervision of Frederick Rowbottom.

Career Later he got a position as a scientific assistant in mathematics at the University of Oslo, Norway, from August till December 1972. In 1974 he became a scientific assistant in mathematics at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. In fall 1976 he was an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Toronto, Canada. From spring 1977 through 1987 he served as a lecturer, then reader, in mathematics at the University of Lancaster, England. From 1987 to 1989 he was a visiting associate professor of mathematics and philosophy at Stanford University in California. From 1989 to 1993 he was the Carter Professor and Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Colby College in Maine. From 1993 to 2000 he was Dean of Science at St. Mary's College of California. From 2001 until he retired he was a senior researcher at the Center for the Study of Language, an independent research center at Stanford University. He was also co-founder and executive director of Stanford University's former Human-Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute (2006), and a co-founder of Stanford Media X university-industry research partnership program. He was a commentator on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Saturday, where he was known as "The Math Guy." His current research is mainly focused on the use of different media to teach mathematics to different audiences. He is also co-founder and president of the company BrainQuake, which creates mathematics learning video games, which he set up in 2011. Other topics of his research are the theory of information, models of reasoning, applications of mathematical techniques in the study of communication, and mathematical cognition. As of 2023 he had authored 33 books and over 80 research or expository articles. Most of his books are aimed at a general audience.

Awards Joint Policy Board for Mathematics Communications Award, 2001 In 2007 he received Wonderfest's Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization. 2004 International Pythagoras Prize in Mathematics, in the category Best Expository Text in the Mathematical Sciences for the Italian translation of The Millennium Problems Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, 2012

Bibliography Articles Devlin, Keith I.; Jensen, R. Björn (1975), "Marginalia to a theorem of Silver", ISILC Logic Conference (Proc. Internat. Summer Inst. and Logic Colloq., Kiel, 1974), Lecture Notes in Mathematics, vol. 499, Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag, pp. 115–142, doi:10.1007/BFb0079419, ISBN 978-3-540-07534-9, MR 0480036 [First proof of Jensen's covering theorem; Keith J. Devlin is credited as Keith I. Devlin in the paper.] Books Constructibility. Springer. 1984. ISBN 3-540-13258-9. Logic and Information. Cambridge University Press. 1991. ISBN 0-521-49971-2. The Joy of Sets: Fundamentals of Contemporary Set Theory. Springer. 1993. ISBN 0-387-94094-4. Mathematics: The Science of Patterns. Holt Paperbacks. 1996. ISBN 0-8050-7344-2. Goodbye, Descartes: the End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1997. ISBN 0-471-25186-0. The Language of Mathematics: Making the Invisible Visible. Holt Paperbacks. 1998. ISBN 0-8050-7254-3. Mathematics: The New Golden Age. Columbia University Press. 1999. ISBN 0-231-11639-X. Life by the Numbers. Wiley. 1999. ISBN 0471328227. The Math Gene: How Mathematical Thinking Evolved and Why Numbers Are Like Gossip. Basic Books. 2000. ISBN 0-465-01619-7. The Millennium Problems: the Seven Greatest Unsolved Mathematical Puzzles of Our Time. Basic Books. 2002. ISBN 0-465-01730-4. The Math Instinct: Why You're a Mathematical Genius (Along with Lobsters, Birds, Cats, and Dogs). Thunder's Mouth Press. 2006. ISBN 1-56025-839-X. The Numbers Behind NUMB3RS: Solving Crime with Mathematics. Plume. 2007. ISBN 978-0-452-28857-7. with coauthor Gary Lorden The Unfinished Game: Pascal, Fermat, and the Seventeenth-Century Letter that Made the World Modern. Basic Books. 2008. ISBN 978-0-465-00910-7. The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci's Arithmetic Revolution. Walker Publishing Co. 2011. ISBN 978-0-8027-7812-3. Mathematics Education for a New Era: Video Games as a Medium for Learning. A K Peters. 2011. ISBN 978-1-56881-431-5. Introduction to Mathematical Thinking. Keith Devlin (18 July 2012). 2012. ISBN 978-0615653631.

References

External links Official website including his curriculum vitae Devlin's Angle Archived 31 December 2020 at the Wayback Machine — column at the Mathematical Association of America

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Keith Devlin

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Keith Devlin claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Keith Devlin before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Keith Devlin ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Keith Devlin

In research: Keith Devlin appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Keith Devlin in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Keith Devlin is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1947 births, 20th-century British mathematicians, 21st-century British mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Keith Devlin outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Keith Devlin in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Keith Devlin means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Keith Devlin out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Keith Devlin in simple terms?

Keith J. Devlin (born 16 March 1947) is a British and American mathematician and professor emeritus at Stanford University.

Why does Keith Devlin matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Keith Devlin?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Keith Devlin.