Roger Nelsen:

On Being an MAA Author

Roger Nelsen, professor emeritus of Lewis & Clark College, has written 11 books
for the MAA since 1993. Perhaps his most well-known (and best-selling, at num-
ber 2,869 on Amazons Science and Mathematics Textbooks list) is Proof Without
Words. Wondering how someone has time to write that much? Nelsen says that it is
-
authors who are also friends, and being retired. We cant all make the last of these

for any aspiring writer. He was interviewed by Jacqueline Jensen-Vallin, editor of
MAA FOCUS.

How did you get involved with MAA?

As an undergraduate in the early 60s, I occasionally read the [American Mathe-
matical] Monthly at the college library, but I knew little about its publisher. That
changed soon after I arrived at Lewis & Clark in 1969. The department chair, Elvy

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the Magazine 

editor.
After a few more successes, Jerry began to send PWW
submissions to me to referee. To do so, I made copies of

Frederickson, was a member of the MAA and would share
her copies of the Monthly and Mathematics Magazine
with me. Soon I found myself borrowing her copies each
month to read some of the articles and try my hand at the
problems in the Problems and Solutions column.
After a few years Elvy told me it was high time that I
support the profession (and obtain my own copies of
the Monthly, the Magazine, and the College Mathematics
Journal) by becoming a member of the MAA, which I did

which ones werent. Refereeing the PWWs taught me two
things: PWWs were popular with the readers, and many
submissions (more than half) were rediscoveries of pre-
viously published PWWs.
At one of the January meetings, I asked Don Albers,
then the MAAs director of publications, if the MAA would
be interested in a PWW book, which I could create from

to send him a manuscript, which I duly did sometime lat-
er, and Proofs Without Words: Exercises in Visual Thinking
appeared in 1993 as the inaugural volume in the Class-
room Resource Materials series.

easy to write as it had so very few words! That has also
made it easy to translate, and translations have appeared
in Greek, Spanish, Japanese, Persian, French, Czech, and
German.
How have textbooks changed since you started writ-
ing them?
Thats a hard question to answer! In mathematics, I think
it depends on the course for which the text is written.
For example, in calculus (the only course for which Ive
coauthored a text), the texts look quite different than they
did, say, 20 years ago. They have more applications, more
use of color, more graphics, and more pages. However, Im
not sure the texts have kept up with the changes in the
audience for calculus. I believe there are more students
today taking calculus in high schools than in all the two-
and four-year colleges and universities combined. As a
 consequence, the college calculus sequence is not really
journals, which eventually led to a 10-year stint (1989- a sequence for many of our students, but texts are often
1998) with several of my L&C colleagues as coeditors of written as if it were.
the Problems and Solutions column in the College Mathe-
matics Journal. That led to a term as chair of the editorial What are the components of a good book (or text-
board for the MAAs Problem Books series. book)?
Another tough question! I can only answer from the
How did you get started writing books? perspective of an author, rather than of a reader or an
 adopter. For me a good book project is one that (a)
(PWWs) appeared in Mathematics Magazine, and soon will be enjoyable to write, because Im interested in the
 topic and believe I have something worth saying about
- it, and (b) Ill learn more about the topic in the process
uring out how a PWW illustrates the truth of a statement of researching and writing. Of course, I always hope that
and hints at its more formal proof. I thought that perhaps a reader will experience some of the enjoyment Ive had
I could create PWWs, and after a number of disappointing writing when he or she reads the book.

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 You have published 11 books with MAA. How do you
manage to write as much as you do?
Well, being retired certainly helps. Of the 11 books Ive
authored or coauthored with the MAA, four were pub-
lished prior to retirement in 2009, and seven since. For
me, its a lot of fun to write, and I learn quite a bit in the
process, due in no small measure to the fact that Ive had
great coauthors with which to work.
The text we ultimately wrote is
designed for well-prepared students
to replace Calc II and prepare them for
further college mathematics.
Tell me about your coauthorshow did you end up
working with each of them?
I have been blessed to have had the opportunity to work
with three really good friends as coauthors: Claudi Alsina
at the Universitat Politcnica de Catalunya in Barcelona,
Caren Diefenderfer at Hollins University in Virginia, and
 collegesthe AB syllabus covers all of Calc I and about
I met Claudi at an international symposium on func-
tional equations in August of 1986 at Mount Holyoke
College, and we became better acquainted coauthoring a
1993 paper with a colleague at UMassAmherst. One of
 their scores on the AP exam) to replace Calc II and pre-
to accompany students on overseas study programs to
Spain in 1999, 2003, and 2009.
After each program I visited Claudi in Barcelona, in
the process discovering a common interest in explor-
ing visualization in mathematics. This ultimately led to
Math Made Visual: Creating What would you like to write about next?
Images for Understanding Mathematics in 2006, When

and Mike from 2008 through 2011. At the 2005 reading at
Colorado State University, Caren and a representative of
the College Board convened a meeting of several readers
(of which I was one) to discuss the possibility of making
some college-level calculus material more available to
high school AP teachers.
Over the years a great many articles on calculus have
been published in MAA journals, but most are not read by
high school teachers since only a small fraction of them
are MAA members. So Caren and I decided to edit a col-
lection of articles, originally published in MAA journals,
for teachers of the AP Calculus course. We were aided
admirably in the project by a team of six veteran high
school teachers who helped us select the 123 articles that
appear in our volume The Calculus Collection: A Resource
for AP and Beyond.
Both Caren and Mike will tell you that being an AP chief
reader takes up a lot of ones time. Nearing the end of
his term in 2011 and knowing that hed no longer have
to commit so much time to AP, Mike suggested we write
what he vaguely called a calculus book together.
-
ture math majors have studied AP calculus in high school
and performed well on the AP calculus exam. But the
syllabus for the Calculus AB exam doesnt mesh well with

40 percent of the standard Calc II at many colleges. So the
text we ultimately wroteCollege Calculus: A One-Term
Course for Students With Previous Calculus Experienceis
designed for well-prepared students (as measured by
pare them for further college mathematics.
Mike and I also hope it helps in the current conversa-
tion about how to better serve the students who studied
calculus in high school when they come to college.
My favorite math course as an undergraduate was
Less is More: Visualizing Basic Inequalities in 2009, and
Charming Proofs: A Journey Into Elegant Mathematics in
2010. Retirement in 2009 ended the overseas programs
with the students, but Claudi and I have continued our
collaboration, mostly electronically now, yielding Icons
of Mathematics: An Exploration of Twenty Key Images in
2011 and A Mathematical Space Odyssey: Solid Geometry
in the 21st Century in 2015.
I met both Caren and Mike through the Advanced Place-
ment Calculus program, where each of us attended the
annual reading [grading] of calculus exams each sum-
mer for over 20 years. Both Caren and Mike served as the

graduate school. Then I discovered stochastic processes
and changed my direction. However, the number theory
course at L&C was one of my favorites to teach. But a cur-
sory examination of number theory texts reveals how few
illustrations many of them have. A number can represent
many thingsthe cardinality of a set, the length of a line
segment, or the area of a plane region. Such representa-
tions naturally lead to a variety of visual arguments, so
number theory texts should have more pictures. Perhaps
my coauthor Claudi Alsina and I will work on such a sup-
plement for the number theory course.
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