Nick Rauh's Story

Nick is a Tacoma native whose journey with mathematics took an unexpected turn from physics to becoming a math major at Harvey Mudd College.

Eventually, he earned a PhD in number theory from the University of Texas at Austin, all driven by his undeniable passion for math. Nick's expertise now shines through his work in higher education and math enrichment for K-12 students.

Learn more about Nick's captivating story and the invaluable contributions he brings to our mission of making math an exciting and accessible experience for all!

Can you share your journey from initially not seeing yourself as a "math person" to becoming deeply involved in the field of mathematics? What sparked your interest in math?

In elementary school, I largely saw math as a series of worksheets that needed to be finished before someone said that time was up. I was pretty slow, and at some point, a teacher told me that my math performance was the thing keeping him from recommending me for gifted programs.

Things started to turn around in middle school when I took pre-algebra, and math became more about problem-solving. At that point, math still seemed to have been figured out way back when, so I was learning it as a tool to apply to something someday.

One of my high school teachers loaned me a conversational-style book on number theory. I was on the standard track to calculus, so the idea that there was some world of math outside that track was strange, and the fact that there were still unresolved questions was even stranger.

I went to college thinking I'd do physics but ended up a math major after taking a few courses and liking that I could reason my way to answers instead of having to successfully run a lab experiment. At that point, some professors told me that I could get paid to be a student if I went to grad school. I didn't have any other plans, so that seemed like as good an idea as any. I ended up with a PhD in number theory, so now I know a lot about problems we don't know how to solve.

My career since then has similarly been a process of falling into things, but once you have a math PhD, you tend to find yourself falling into mostly math-related things.

As a math education advocate how do you spark curiosity in students who find math intimidating? How do you overcome challenges in promoting math enrichment for K-12 students and ensure positive impacts?

I think the biggest trick I've found for getting students into math is to give them something unlike what they've been working on in school. If nobody has seen it, then there aren't students who are established at being good or bad at that thing. 

A lot of the usual walls come down and the playing field gets leveled. Even better if the activity is sugar-coated as a game, puzzle, or arts and crafts activity. 

At that point, the educators are often the bigger skeptics than the kids. "How is this math?" "How does this tie in with our school's curriculum?" "What are the real world applications of this?" Skeptics usually get it once they see students engaged, asking good questions, and thinking on their own, but our education system makes it difficult to carve out time for mathematical activity that doesn't serve the usual track to calculus. It also unfortunately doesn't usually reward those who do carve out that time. 

We know you're passionate about designing mathematical games and puzzles. Could you share with us your all-time favorite math-related brain teaser or puzzle that never fails to challenge and entertain?

One of my favorite puzzles is the "locker problem," which I first encountered in high school. Student 1 runs down a hall along a row of closed lockers and opens every locker. Then student 2 runs down the hall and changes the state of every even-numbered locker, opening the closed ones and closing the open ones.

In turn, students 3-100 then run down the hall in sequence, student k changing the state of all lockers with numbers that are multiples of k. Which lockers are open after all 100 students have made the run?

Many people are familiar with this problem, but there's a general class of problems to ponder that most might not have considered. For example, which lockers are open if only the even-numbered students participate? Or, which students should participate if we wish to see only the lockers numbered with cubes to be left open? (More generally, what sets of students leave what sets of lockers open and vice versa?)