By Alyssa Flick

Once a year Bluffton University schedules a day of seminars led by college professors with a lot of interesting insight to the subjects they teach. The event is called Civic Engagement Day. This year the day took place on April 10.

One of these seminars was hosted by Dr. Darryl Nester a professor of math. He obtained his doctorate in statistics and has also taught many classes training college students how to be more technologically savvy.

The topic of choice was the internet and i’s socially utilitarian aspect. More specifically, how to provide help to others who seek assistance in math on the Internet or efficient ways you could look for help in arithmetic yourself.

“The Internet provides a convenient way to share those demonstrations with the rest of the world – and occasionally, I get emails from people who have found those pages to be useful,” writes Nester.

Nester and five other persons in all of America share the same first and surname. You could also imagine how easy it would be to search for him and his websites through the Internet.

Nester has a list of sites full of math advice he calls, “Curating my online identity.” Nester googled the assets of his virtual identity and has found that he is very recognizable. 
“A Google search for my name returns my home page as the top hit,” states the nonchalant Nester.

With all those he attracts, Nester has named categorized types of people who try to contact him.

“Crackpots” for instance are a group of people who share visionary quantum physics theories and need another mathematically trained mind to critique their idea.

Next is “Help me with my homework” group. People of this party need Nester to help them with their homework.

Then there are the “Help me with my work,” people who need Nester’s knowledge to help get their jobs done. Nester shared an example letter that fell into the “help me with my work” group range.

“Hello,
We have to create a  batch Java program that checks the validity of a Kan Ken game description in terms of syntax, and checks (using brute force search of all answers) that the game has a unique solution. For 4-by-4 games. Create a collection of at least 10 4-by-4 games on which to test your program.
Can You help me in this task pls.
I am not getting any ideas. I have to submit this assignment in just 1 day. Help me if its possible for you.
Thank you.
Regards,
(signed name of e-mail sender)
Nester answers that it was not at all possible for him to do so by simply not responding to the e-mail. He said that creating a Java page with all the applications also asked for attached in a single day was simply impossible.

Nester has proven himself and his sites useful because of the next contact group he calls the, “thank you for your help,” group. These people have expressed their genuine gratitude for the little or immense service Nester aided them with.