NEVER BY THE NUMBERS
WHEN THE NORTH CAROLINA COUNCIL OF TEACHERS OF MATHEMATICS AWARDED JOHN NOLAND THE 2019 STATE MATH CONTEST COACH’S AWARD, NO ONE WAS SURPRISED–EXCEPT, MAYBE, JOHN NOLAND. SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS ANNOUNCING THE AWARD WERE FLOODED WITH DOZENS OF COMMENTS AND WELL WISHES FROM STUDENTS, PARENTS, ALUMNI, AND COLLEAGUES ALIKE.
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Eighteen
The Magazine of Cary Academy
It’s a good bet that if you ask most people what their favorite subject in high school was, few will say “math.” For many, high school math was something to survive, an abstract concept typified by memorization and regurgitation and absent a link to the world beyond the classroom. However, no one who has learned math with Noland, during his 12 years at Cary Academy, would share that opinion. The son of an environmental engineer and an accountant, math was always present in Noland’s life, its impact on the world around him apparent. His father’s work illustrated the importance of data collection and developing predictive models, while his mother’s fluency with finances showed him the relevance of math to everyday life. An avid chess and board game player, he saw mathematical influence in the games he played every day. Ironically, though, Noland didn’t see a future in math for himself. When he began work on his undergraduate degree at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Noland felt the need to capitalize upon his parents’ investment in his education. Concerned that a career in math might not be lucrative, he pursued an interest in computer programming and embarked on a computer science degree. He soon realized, however, that the program’s heavy emphasis on electrical engineering—something he didn’t love— meant that he would be “blowing a lot of things up, and not in a good way.” In the end, he returned to math, realizing that the lifelong pursuit of his passion was value enough.
