On a similar note, Simas said the songs brought him a new perspective on living after the onset of the pandemic and the coinciding shift to online learning. Tan said she particularly enjoyed the music because it helped her memorize and understand difficult mathematical concepts. It was a small group of us (in the discussion), but we all supported Joe in his YouTube career efforts.”įor third-year chemistry student Laurie Tan, Breen’s music is catchy and still conveys the concepts mentioned in class through lyrics that are both silly and educational. “One time, toward the end of the quarter, he played a live rendition of one of his songs at the end of the discussion, (and) that was just the highlight of the quarter. … He downloaded GarageBand, and he would talk about it before discussion,” Simas said. “(Breen) still made Zoom learning really, really enjoyable. Breen was also extremely excited about making and publishing his songs on YouTube, Simas said. Simas said Breen is enthusiastic about communicating mathematical concepts in creative and clear ways, such as through song and dance. In terms of Breen’s channel, third-year electrical engineering student Elijah Simas said he enjoyed the new songs, considering he was one of Breen’s students prior to the YouTube channel’s creation. But even then, it took me until the pandemic and the start of the YouTube channel to realize maybe that (songwriting) could be my niche.”
“Every year after that, I would write a math-related song for our department talent show, and so that was the first time I started writing songs about math.
“Every year we would have a talent show in the math department, and in my first year, I was like, ‘Oh, I could write a song about my first year in grad school,'” Breen said. He tried to focus on writing songs dealing with serious topics, but after experimenting with different tracks, he found out his pieces turn out best if they used satirical lyrics concerning topics such as mathematics, Breen said. “It hit me at some point in May that I could write a silly song about math (to) spice things up for students.”īreen’s experience with music stems from his time prior to college, as he said he remembered playing guitar in fifth grade and writing his first song in seventh grade, eventually discontinuing the songwriting tradition until he picked it up again in graduate school. “I was TA-ing for a calculus class, and I was still playing around with the virtual format and figuring out how best to engage everyone and make content that people would use,” Breen said. For Breen, his mathematical music started out as a playful way to make the calculus experience livelier and more interesting. Inspired by a desire to blend his interests in songwriting with his responsibilities as a calculus teaching assistant during online learning, Breen said he decided to use his newly bought iPad to engage with his students by writing songs about the topics covered in class. The graduate mathematics student started a YouTube channel in spring 2020 focusing on music videos about calculus and topics in mathematical research. Joe Breen looks to integrate math and music, one function at a time.
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