Pat McKeague – Author, Mathematician, Teacher

This article first appeared in the September issue of Journal Plus: The Magazine of the Central Coast

Number was the substance of all things. - Pythagoras

Pat McKeague, one of San Luis Obispo’s best-selling authors, doesn’t rely on intricate plots or unique characters to captivate his readers. He engages them by developing themes in mathematics using a human cannonball, the Ferris wheel in the Orson Welles film “The Third Man,” and the dragsters in the film “Heart Like a Wheel” as examples.

Since the publication of his first math textbook in the mid-70’s, Pat has sold over three million books, from algebra to trigonometry, mostly at the community college level, and he estimates that roughly four million students have used his texts. After thirty-five years his sales are still going strong, but there’s more to Pat’s interest in math than just big numbers.

Pat’s parents moved from Superior, Wisconsin, to California after World War II. Pat was born in Santa Barbara in 1946. His father, a radio operator and a waist gunner in a B-24 Liberator, was shot down over Albania and spent the last eight months of the war as a POW. He went on to become the personnel manager for Ampex. Pat’s mother taught kindergarten. The family moved south to the San Fernando Valley, and Pat eventually graduated from Granada Hills High School, where he played football.

“Los Angeles in those days was an easy place to get around. I remember driving to the San Diego Zoo for a date. Everything was accessible and fun.” His favorite teacher, Victor Ansalone, was a New Yorker who taught honors social studies. “Victor had been investigated for being a Communist. He predicted America’s involvement in Vietnam long before it happened. He was just an interesting guy who told the truth and shared his opinions about history.” Pat, who at the time belonged to a social club called the Del Vikings and didn’t consider himself honors class material, eventually dedicated one of his books to Ansalone.

After high school Pat attended San Fernando Valley State, now Cal State Northridge, where he met his wife Diane. They have two children, Pat III and Amy, and seven grandchildren, all of whom live in San Luis Obispo. In one of those turning points best appreciated from a distance, had he been accepted to dental school, his first career choice, his success story as a math teacher and author would not have happened. Due to the Vietnam War and the fierce competition for graduate school deferments, his dental school plans didn’t work out. He attended Brigham Young University where he earned his master’s in mathematics in 1971, completing a two year program in eleven months.

With a young family, and after getting rejections from ninety-one companies for work in engineering or programming, Pat learned about a teaching program in California for students with graduate degrees, and three weeks later he was teaching mathematics at Lompoc High School. “I was almost fired the first year. I had no control of the classroom. I shaped up the last few months with the help of a fellow math teacher, Pat Clevenger, after the principal told me he might not ask me back.”

As his skills improved and he began to really enjoying teaching, Pat started applying to community colleges up and down the west coast, eventually landing a job at Cuesta College where “Once again I got lucky. I had an office right across the hall from Gil Stork, who became my role model.”

Inspired by two Cuesta faculty members who had published math textbooks, Pat wrote a chapter for an elementary algebra book and sent it to eight publishers. Three rejected it, three showed an interest, and two lost it. He accepted an advance and a royalty offer from Academic Press and his first book, priced at $12.95, sold 6000 copies. “It had more mistakes than any book I ever published. I called the teachers who used it, which turned out to be the right thing to do. I revised that book and went on to write one book every year for the next eight years, and eventually ended up with sixteen titles,” Pat said. His pre-algebra and trigonometry texts became the bestselling books in the country.

When I asked him the secret to his success, he said, “I’m just a normal person who likes math and likes to teach. I write my books from the student side, but they also appeal to teachers.” Pat’s company, XYZ texts, now prints, publishes and markets his textbooks. New components are Math TV, a website with instructional videos featuring Cuesta students demonstrating problems, worksheets and electronic versions of his texts, and XYZ Homework, an online homework and course management system that instructors can purchase with the texts.

When he was teaching Pat devoted the first five minutes of each period to something of interest from the real world that complemented and enriched his instruction. Now, at a half dozen or more math teacher conferences a year all over the country, he delivers that message, suggests that teachers give themselves permission to develop a story about what they’re teaching and get it out five minutes at a time. Pat’s talks include Islam and mathematics, showing how algebra developed in the middle east centuries ago; spirituality and mathematics; success in math and life; and the previously mentioned references to the human cannonball, the Ferris wheel and drag racing.

In addition to his devotion to math and teaching, Pat has been involved with a variety of organizations in his local community: 4H, the Literacy Council, Friends of the Library, Creative Mediation and others. He has also been a long time sponsor of the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival.

My guess is that there are many students who remember Pat McKeague as their best and favorite math teacher and many more who have benefited from his approach to teaching math as presented in his textbooks. He once told me a funny story that demonstrated his humble approach to his success. Feeling the need to get back into the classroom, he applied for a part time position at Cuesta. As he was going through his teaching background and qualifications for the job during the formal interview, one of the panelists quietly said, “And you wrote the book.”

As a math phobic who barely scraped through Algebra II by the time I graduated high school, I wish I had learned from a teacher and an advocate for math like Pat. Think of all the pain I could have avoided!

Sierra Serenade

This originally appeared on www.bobbblog.com on 9/4/12

If there is music at the highest elevations of the Sierra Nevada it is the music of near silence.  A recent three day hike in the Eastern Sierras starting at the Pine Creek trailhead, a few miles north of Bishop, reinforced that reality for me once again.

Each summer since 2004, except 2010 when I was recovering from an unexpected “cardiac event,” my friend Frank and I have spent a few days backpacking in the Sierras.  We hike in anywhere from six to fifteen miles, establish a base camp near a peak we hope to climb, attempt to summit the next day, spend another night and then hike out. The peaks are usually in the 13000’+ range, with suggested routes to the top rather than obvious trails. Our highest summit was Mt. Agassiz at 13891’ in 2006.

This summer we chose Royce Peak, 13200’, as our goal. On the first day we hiked about nine miles with an elevation gain of over 4000’.  When we reached Pine Creek Pass at 11100’, we left the trail and hiked overland to Royce Lakes at 11560’.  The hike was demanding, like being on a stair master for seven hours, the difference being the magnificent Sierra vistas that accompanied us: clear flowing water, waterfalls, aromatic pines, serene lakes, majestic granite peaks, the stark almost lunar beauty of the landscape above the tree line.

It is above tree line that the Sierras sing their sweetest silent song.  Camped on a patch of sandy ground next to the lake, only a few intermittent notes call out once we quiet our human activity:  murmur of the lake against the shore; a tailless pika’s excited squeak; the wind rustling the sides of our tents.  As night approaches and stars and constellations appear seemingly just above our heads, it is so quiet I can hear the blood surge through my body with each serene heartbeat.

We had company on this trip.  Throughout our two days by the lake, a lone seagull drifted on the water, preened on a nearby rock, soared above the rippled surface with Merriam and Royce Peaks as a backdrop.  It was like a theme in the music of this journey, one better felt than explained. 

And although it was satisfying to reach the summit of Royce Peak, and glorious to return to the trailhead the next day, it is the music of the Sierras that remains with me when I return to civilization, the ancient silence that yields a quiet heart and a peaceful mind, that keeps me right-sized as I walk through an otherwise noisy life.

Poem: Open Water

Open Water

In the open water between kelp beds
just below the bluffs, where the green ocean
usually rolls calmly with the tide,
a thousand sea gulls and pelicans
kamikaze into a bait fish ball
roiling just beneath the surface,
a feeding frenzy both antic and fierce,
as if saved from the brink of starvation.

Then, like a giant mushroom
emerging from loamy soil,
the enormous head of a humpback whale
rises in the midst of the turmoil,
its gaping mouth filled with water and fish,
the birds attacking its wake for leftovers
as it silently recedes and disappears.
I scan for another sighting
rewarded first by the long rolling back and flukes
and then again, in a new location,
the vertical rise of head and mouth.

Further out, a lone humpback
surges north like a locomotive
mist from its spout
lingering above the whitecaps,
elusive like a dream.

Spellbound, I can’t avert my eyes.
It’s like looking at photos
of galaxies and nebulae in deep space,
like hearing the message in great music.
It’s to know without knowing,
to ask questions and lean into the mystery
without expecting an answer
and not really wanting one
anyway.

Poem: Cutting Lettuce

Cutting Lettuce: June 27, 2012

Today is my wife’s and son’s birthday.
Twenty-three years ago, when my wife was thirty-three,
the doctor lifted him from her and proclaimed,
“What a little porker!” “Hey,” I objected,
“that’s my son you’re talkin’ about!”
“George!” the other doctor scolded.

My wife left for work at ten this morning.
My son at eleven to go surfing with a friend.
Me, a year removed from locking my office door
for the last time, wrote, practiced saxophone,
cut lettuce on the garden terrace
in our compact backyard.

Doves drank from the birdbath
and pecked seeds from the feeder.
Our gray yard cat, Otis, flowed
down the terrace levels like water.
All the while, a perfect blue sky
and warm sun lovingly bathed
my creaky bones and achy joints.

Later we will eat cake and celebrate.
What will the next year bring?
I don’t need or want to know.
I think I’ll be here for now.

Olympic Moment

Recently published at the story telling website BOBB: www.bobbblog.com

What was your Olympic moment? I don’t mean the day you went for the gold, although you may have had one of those, but the day you watched an Olympic event, either in person or on TV, and it changed your life?

Mine happened as a twelve-year-old watching the Rome Olympics on TV in 1960. Imperial Bodyguard Abebe Bikila, a last minute addition to the Ethiopian Olympic team, won the marathon in record time…in his bare feet.  It was the first Olympic Gold Medal ever won by a Sub-Saharan athlete.  I watched the race on my parents’ newly purchased Zenith color console at our home in Philadelphia.

The 1960 marathon started and ended at the Arch of Constantine, next to the Colosseum. In a spectacular and mesmerizing display of romance and artistry, the last few miles of the race were run in the dark with only occasional spotlights to illuminate the course. Bikila, tall and graceful in red shorts and green singlet, the Ethiopian colors, out sprinted his lone challenger to the finish line and through the Arch, the lights of the Colosseum behind him.  Bikila became my hero and I vowed to someday run a marathon and win a medal of my own.

Bikila won the marathon again at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.  In 1969 he was paralyzed in an accident while driving the Volkswagen Bug given to him by Haile Selassie for his Olympic conquests.  The accident occurred when he swerved to avoid student protesters on the streets of Addis Ababa. He died of complications in 1973. He was only 41.

On December 18, 1983, three days before the birth of my son Willie, I ran my first marathon, finishing in three hours and twenty-six minutes.  I dedicated my training and race to my wife, my unborn son, and my inspiration, the great Olympian, Abebe Bikila. A few months later I was fortunate to be in the Los Angeles Colosseum when Joan Benoit won the first women’s Olympic Marathon. The temperature was in the 90’s but I remember getting the chills as she entered the stadium and circled the track to the finish line, tens of thousands of fans on their feet cheering as she passed.

What was your Olympic moment? BOBB and I would love to know.

Movie Review: The Intouchables

Any movie with a soundtrack that includes Vivaldi, Nina Simone, and Earth, Wind and Fire can't be all bad. "The Intouchables," starring Fracois Cluzet and Omar Cy, lurches dangerously close to cloying sentimentality and racial sterotyping, but thanks to performances by Cluzet and Cy that transcend the cliches, it survives as a first rank, life affirming, feel good movie. Philippe, played by Cluzet (a Dustin Hoffman lookalike) is a rich quadriplegic Frenchman who needs round-the-clock care and has the money to pay for it. Driss, played by Cy, is an African immigrant recently released from jail after serving six months for robbery. Driss is applying for jobs, knowing he'll be rejected, but it's the only way he can apply for public assistance. Philippe, impressed by Driss's energy, honesty and political incorrectness, hires him and thus begins a beautiful relationship in which each learns from the other (hence Vivaldi vs. Earth, Wind and Fire). Cy is luminous from start to finish, like Usain Bolt in a starring film roll, and Cluzet is amazing with only his head, eyes and smile to work with. There are some wonderful set pieces that work perfectly, including a hilarious trip to the opera, and the usual complications that attempt to give some depth to the characters, but in the end it's a "buddy picture" starring unlikely buddies from opposite ends of the cultural spectrum who find common humanity somewhere in the middle. When I saw it, everyone applauded when the credits rolled. Check it out.

Poem: There is No Comparing

There is no comparing

There is no comparing

A gunman who unleashes deadly fury
in a crowded movie theater
killing many people
and injuring many more

A revered coach who covers up
repulsive crimes against children
and after his death has his bronze statue
removed from public view

A golfer who blows a big lead
on the final holes of the British Open
while millions watch on TV
and pity his stunned disappointment

A friend who turns to face the sea
just as two dolphins leap
and describe a perfect arc
as they pass each other in mid-air

Physicists who rejoice at the discovery
of the God particle that explains mass
and reminds us once again
that the gunmen, coach,
golfer, friend, dolphin
are all just the same:

Protons, neutrons, electrons
and empty space.

There is no comparing