Welcome to the Pasayten Institute
Our mission is to promote and practice Science and Mathematics. We are platform agnostic. We value being outdoors, a plurality of perspectives and try to be skeptical empiricists.
We are currently focused on adult education, but increasingly interested in helping parents and teachers help their students learn mathematics. We also consult on applied projects, especially where data strategy, analysis and algorithm design are involved.
We are not a 501c3 nonprofit at this time. We raise funds through our supporters, private events, working with individuals and teams, and selling coffee. If you’d like to learn more about any of these, please get in touch.
We’re located in Washington’s Methow River Valley, just south of the peaks and drainages which collectively share our institute’s name. These are the highlands East of the North Cascades whose rivers drain into the Methow and Okanogan Rivers. Because of this beautiful setting, we try to fold the outdoors into as much of our work as possible.
Aligning our mission with our reality
Our mission is now to promote and practice Science and Mathematics.
When the Pasayten Institute was first conceived, I imagined it as a 501c(3) nonprofit able to raise funds for math and physics communication and adult education. I really wanted to reach as many people as possible, by whatever means possible.
My belief was that locus of user attention was dynamic. I wanted to be agile enough to adapt to changing habits. I also thought that a breadth of exposure would teach us something about how to reach different audiences, and perhaps what sort of Science that would find interesting.
I still believe these things, but I’m no longer convinced a full blown 501c(3) needs to be the end goal. Things are going just fine as a regular LLC - a not not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization.
Of course, we still need money to drive the mission. The website costs money, the software to make the videos costs money, and of course I need to eat! Three years in, it’s time to review what we’ve done and realign our mission and values with what seems to be working.
To be clear, this is a very minor change.
Our mission is now to promote and practice Science and Mathematics.
The effective difference between this mission and our old one - to build and share Scientific knowledge without barriers - involves “practice”. Over the past few years we have supported our work through consulting on Data Strategy and Algorithm design, we’ve done media production work to support conservation organizations, we’ve sold books on Particle Physics and we’ve taught Mathematics.
This new mission statement feels closer aligned with what we’re actually doing, and what projects we’re excited about taking on in the future. It’s also in alignment with our ongoing attempts to find funding for our math videos!
This mission is supported by a smaller set of familiar values that directly impact our practice.
We are outdoors. As much as humanly possible. We want to fold the outdoors into our practice in whatever way we can.
We are platform agnostic. We favor the platforms where we do the most good. Of course, we’d like to do more on a wider variety of platforms.
We value pluralism. Our perspective on Mathematics is just one of many. We need the many! One educational organization or video or textbook on any given topic cannot accurately represent the state of those ideas. We want to help others express theirs.
We are skeptical empiricists, or at least we aim to be. We hold no viewpoint as a priori privileged. Put differently, we reject Platonic idealism wholesale. At least, we try to. We adapt to changing circumstances by falsifying hypotheses. (On a related note, we encourage you to ignore any and all philosophers of Science who reject Popperian falsification wholesale. They are cranks not directly exposed to the actual practice of Science.)
Website Overhaul
It’s been a tricky couple of years out here at the confluence of the Chewuch and Methow rivers. We’ve been working on fundraising and getting distracted by some health issues and a couple of adventurous side projects. Not to worry, we’re still here!
Hey friends!
It’s been a tricky couple of years out here at the confluence of the Chewuch and Methow rivers. We’ve been working on fundraising and getting distracted by some health issues and a couple of adventurous side projects. Not to worry, we’re still here!
The Field Guide to Particle Physics remains our most popular material, and the last two episodes of Season Three are currently in production. We also wanted to highlight some other small projects we’re been developing in the past year or two. You can find those under the newsletters tab.
If you’re keen on video material, we’ve also put together some summaries
The biggest trouble we have right now are the notes for the Sean for Science videos involving Vertex Operator Algebras and the Lie algebra sl2R. Those got lost in the shuffle of moving websites around and switching everything over under the Pasayten Institute label. In all likelihood we’ll have to put together some summary lecture notes, rather than recreate the originals. This is probably better, as we find a better way to explain these ideas each time we revisit them.
Hope you are all well. More to come this summer.
Yours truly in Math and Physics,
Sean