Egan Chernoff

Year Graduated: 2009
Program/Degree: Mathematics Education PhD

Thesis: Subjective Probabilities Derived from the Perceived Randomness of Sequences of Outcomes

Dr. Egan J Chernoff (@MatthewMaddux) is a Professor of Mathematics Education, Department of Curriculum Studies and an Associate Member, Department of Educational Administration in the College of Education at the University of Saskatchewan (U of S). He is, also, an Associate Member, Department of Mathematics and Statistics in the College of Arts and Science at the U of S, and an Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University (SFU). Currently, Egan is the (English services) mathematics editor of the Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, an associate editor of the Statistics Education Research Journal, and is the Book Reviews Editor of The Mathematics Enthusiast. He also is an editorial board member of Vector: Journal of the British Columbia Association of Mathematics Teachers and The Variable: An SMTS Periodical. Egan's research utilizes logical fallacies (e.g., the fallacy of composition, the appeal to ignorance and others) and particular theories, models and frameworks from the fields of mathematics education and cognitive psychology (e.g., attribute substitution) to account for prospective elementary, middle and high school math teachers' normatively incorrect, inconsistent and sometimes inexplicable responses to a variety of probabilistic tasks.He also makes efforts to popularize mathematics education.

For example, he wrote a column entitled “Math Ed Matters by MatthewMaddux” for The Variable, where he tells slightly bent, untold, true stories of mathematics teaching and learning. Egan was, but is becoming less and less of, an ardent user of social media for mathematics education. His digital curation of the mathematics education information he finds via the web has led him to be known as the Yahoo (in, of course, a web directory sense) of mathematics education.