I am wondering how to find good opportunities in editorials that publish work to educate younger readers and invite them to be curious about mathematics. For context, I have recently produced many interesting results regarding how the number π pertains to Lebesgue spaces and have accompanied this work with many enjoyable plots. I am fairly certain that the work I've produced is not something worthy of traditional publications. However, I thought it would still be a great topic for a younger audience to write about. I have considered starting a blog, however, I am hesitant as I do not think it will sufficiently reach many people. I know that there are mathematics magazines—and even more broadly scholastic/educational magazines—that aim to engage younger minds (maybe 16 to 25-year-olds) in mathematics. Given that there do exist these magazines, how would one go about judging which avenues of publication/general dissemination are the best fit for this work?
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40Ah, young people these days, with their nightclubs and loud music and Lebesgue spaces...– cag51 ♦Commented Mar 8 at 23:28
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1'Mathematics' and 'casual' have no intersecting space. More seriously, there are some publications on recreational mathematics and on teaching mathematics. Take a look.– David SmithCommented Mar 9 at 0:06
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1I'm not sure how "casual" applies here– Azor Ahai -him-Commented Mar 11 at 0:59
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@AzorAhai-him- I am using casual in a way that describes how I might enjoy reading an article about glaciers or tectonic plates despite having no real in-depth knowledge of geology. I suppose I am classifying academic literature into two categories: Technical (think Elsevier or Springer) and Casual (types of articles that are meant to captivate an audience—in this case a young audience—or educate a lay audience). Perhaps there are better words than causal but I think the point of the post remains just as clear even with a better synonym.– DG_researcherCommented Mar 11 at 15:14
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1if you do start a blog, you might find Summer of Math exposition (some.3b1b.co) interesting. It is a competition for math explainers which mostly serves as a platform to discover them– Felix B.Commented Mar 11 at 18:06
2 Answers
The usual method of choosing a journal is to think about where other, similar papers were published. I'm a mathematician, and I support you writing up what you described and getting it published! Here are some venues:
The Mathematical Intelligencer
The American Mathematical Monthly
The Graduate Journal of Mathematics (disclaimer: I am on the editorial board)
PRIMUS (if you can frame it a bit more about teaching)
The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (this one is slightly more of a stretch but is worth being aware of; I've published two papers here)
You can check recent issues of these venues and see if they have published papers in line with the one you're working on. Good luck!
For your specific case, I suspect that Experimental Mathematics could be an appropriate venue. This is a research rather than expository journal, but I suspect your work is at least related to what they look for - experiential, maybe computational results which, while not constituting a proof of a theorem, provide valuable mathematical insights.
I would also add that the Mathematical Society of Japan publishes a wonderful expository journal, Sugaku (Japanese for "mathematics"). The AMS publishes a partial translation as Sugaku Expositions. Your results might be a good fit, although very unfortunately they only accept articles in the Japanese language.
