John Grant McLoughlin and Education Notes: By the Numbers

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Education Notes
February 2025 TOC icon
Education Notes
February 2025 (Vol. 57, No. 1)

Education Notes bring mathematical and educational ideas forth to the CMS readership in a manner that promotes discussion of relevant topics including research, activities, issues, and noteworthy news items. Comments, suggestions, and submissions are welcome.

Egan J Chernoff, University of Saskatchewan (egan.chernoff@usask.ca)
Kseniya Garaschuk, University of the Fraser Valley (kseniya.garaschuk@ufv.ca)

At least for me, it takes a bit of time for the sheer scale of another person’s remarkable achievement to truly snap into focus. Alex Ovechkin approaching Wayne Gretzky’s record for most goals in National Hockey League (NHL) history, for example. Such was the case for me, recently, when I considered John Grant McLoughlin and his tenure at Education Notes.

As he mentioned in his final article as co-editor (“Sharing Mathematics: An Unfinished Tapestry”), John took on the editorial role for Education Notes beginning in 2010. That’s a long time ago. Maybe it had something to do with the Gregorian Calendar having just “flipped” to 2025, I am not sure, but I decided to dig into the “Previous Issues” and “Archived Issues” sections of CMS Notes to get a better sense of what John and his co-editors have been up to for all those years. Alternatively stated, here is a quick look at John Grant McLoughlin and Education Notes by the numbers.

During his tenure, CMS Notes was published six times a year. In February, March/April, May, September, October/November and December from 2010 to 2019; and, in February, March, June, September, October and December from 2020 to 2024. Not only, then, was John, along with his co-editors, instrumental to Education Notes for a 15 year run (2024-2010+1), he was, also, an instrumental part of the publication of CMS Notes for the last 90 (15 x 6) issues. Ninety!

Myself involved with different editorial activities during my career, I wish to highlight, here, the behind the scenes, the less than glamorous, the thankless editorial activity required to publish 90 articles in Education Notes over a 15-year period. Vision, organization and management, yes, are all required. One must also consider the editing, back and forth communication with authors and, importantly, the deadlines. Add changing styles, changing formats and trends to the mix. Proof reading, copy editing, guidelines, spelling, grammar… the list just goes on and on. I would be remiss not to mention one overarching metric necessary for John’s editorial duties: time. Speaking of metrics, there are some rather fun/alternative ways to “measure” John’s tenure at Education Notes.

One could frame John’s 90 contributions over the past fifteen years relative to, for example, the number of CMS Presidents during the same period of time. Alternatively, one could come up with a list of the all the different contributors and their relative details, for example, the universities or provinces in which they reside. With the help of technology, one could provide an aggregate account of the number of pages or words with which John was involved. Looking to the past could also put things into perspective. By way of example, the Winter Olympics were held in Vancouver, BC in 2010, and is the same year in which the iPad was introduced and Instagram was launched. No matter the metric, I think it truly falls short in capturing John’s contribution to the Canadian Mathematical Society. There is, I will argue, one metric that comes somewhat close.

Table 1. JGM Contributions to Education Notes

I wasn’t kidding when I said that I dug into the Previous and Archived Issues of CMS Notes. In doing so, I learned a lot. For example, I learned that, despite advances in technology, I have a fondness for newsletters in pdf form. I also learned that I would like, in our (read: Kseniya and Egan’s) tenure, to have Book Reviews and, especially, Brief Book Reviews as part of Education Notes. I was particularly fond of John’s editorial excerpts which were added to procured contributions as a nice touch, nicely done to set the stage for the reader. Most importantly, in my opinion, as shown in Table 1., I learned that John contributed, either by himself or with co-authors on 21 different occasions. Twenty-one!

By the numbers, John Grant McLoughlin’s commitment to Education Notes, CMS Notes, and the Canadian Mathematics Society is unassailable. Although John and I met in person on numerous occasions, it took me digging back into past and archived issues of CMS Notes to get a true sense of how big his shoes truly are.

Thankfully, Kseniya is there to help with the Shift Change at the Education Notes. Thank you, Kseniya. Thank you, John.

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