About

I am a science fiction and fantasy junkie with a book hoarding problem. At last count my home has over 300 science fiction and fantasy books threatening to destroy the poor bookshelves which are burdened with them. I am also a fan of the world's first roleplaying game; by fan I mean I think about it way more often than I should. I think it may have to do something with the fact that in those games we use mathematics to determine the direction of stories, and mathematics and stories are two of my favourite things.
I am interested in mathematics outreach at all levels, and any elementary or high school teachers that are interested in having me visit their schools are welcome to email me. I write a blog with a co-author who is a professor at the University of Guelph about games and mathematics in general, called Dan and Andrew's Game Place.

Research Interests

My research has spanned a couple of very different areas. My graduate work was in bioinformatics and my advisor was the late Daniel Ashlock. I applied evolutionary algorithms to the short string DNA analysis problem and developed some techniques for visualizing DNA sequences, and other interesting phenomena, as part of that project. You can read my thesis here if interested. During my time at Queen's University, I learned a great deal of game theory of all kinds, and so I spent a couple of years working in that area and wrote a textbook that was the synthesis of the notes for a course I built.

Currently, my research interests are in applying machine assisted techniques to both teaching and game design, and "card-ifying" games. I'm currently working on a project called FRAX that I hope will help with the dire state in which Canadian students find themselves with regards to knowledge of basic fraction arithmetic and dealing with fractions in general. If you are interested in helping with this project at any level, please send me an email. I'm also interested in the improvement of teaching practices at the university level. I'm part of the Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group, and the First Year Math Group. As a teaching professor, I do not have a research lab at this time, so I am not currently accepting graduate students.

Sub-Discipline

Applied Mathematics

Research Areas