Why math professors choose chalk
- Joanne Jacobs
- Apr 9
- 1 min read
Stanford math professors prefer chalk and chalkboards to laptop projectors or whiteboards, writes Kali Shiloh for Stanford Magazine. Some physicists, chemists and statisticians also teach with a piece of chalk and a black or green board.
Writing with chalk is slower. "Math professors tend to blaze through theorems when not slowed by friction," he writes. Students can't keep up.
Using chalk as opposed to a whiteboard marker or iPad pencil, "helps me not to go too fast and to think carefully, both in my computations and in instruction,” says math professor Jonathan Luk.
Whiteboards are supposed to be easier to read, but professors worry about "marker roulette," writes Shiloh. “I was once assigned to a room with a whiteboard,” says math professor Brian Conrad. “There were 12 markers in the room, the first 11 of which were dead.”
When math classrooms are renovated this summer, they'll be equipped with the highest quality teaching technology: black CeramicSteel chalkboards and Hagoromo Fulltouch chalk.
I loved using chalk when I was teaching. I chuckled at "marker roulette" (absolutely true). You always know how much writing you can get out of a piece of chalk. My handwriting was much better on the chalkboard than with a whiteboard.
Not a math teacher (much less professor!), but I always liked chalk.
There's something off-putting about the chemical smell of the markers used on whiteboards--and erasing the markers (especially the colors other than black) can be difficult.