Kate Ertmann on the Math Behind Chaos, Business, and Everyday Thinking

Gabrielle Birchak/ March 25, 2025/ Uncategorized/ 0 comments

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTS

Gabrielle Bir­chak: And then I, it’s almost like we’ve already been drink­ing and it’s not even noon.

Kate Ert­mann: Well, I dun­no about you, but No. Okay. No I haven’t. I’m just drink­ing water.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Wel­come to Math, sci­ence His­to­ry, a pod­cast ded­i­cat­ed to bring­ing the top­ics of math and sci­ence to you through the lens of his­to­ry. It’s still Wom­en’s His­to­ry Month, and I am still focus­ing on the awe­some­ness of women.

In today’s episode, I am inter­view­ing Kate …Ert­mann from the blog Kate Loves Math with an Aster­isk. I’m Gabrielle Bir­chak. I’m an author and a speak­er with a back­ground in math, sci­ence, and jour­nal­ism. And by the time you’re done lis­ten­ing to this, you will find a love for math that you nev­er thought you had.

Kate Ert­mann brings a fas­ci­nat­ing and unex­pect­ed jour­ney into the world of math­e­mat­ics. Before she turned 30, Kate had already made her mark in film and tele­vi­sion start­ing as a child actor in New York City and lat­er work­ing as an indie film­mak­er, TV com­mer­cial pro­duc­er and dig­i­tal pro­duc­er. But it was when she start­ed inte­grat­ing 3D ani­ma­tion into her projects that she had an epiphany math and science.

Her long­time pas­sions weren’t just behind the scenes. They were inte­gral to every­thing that she loved. In 2022, she launched Kate Loves Math with an aster­isk. It is a blog filled with insight­ful math cen­tric essays that explore the why behind life’s com­plex­i­ties and offer a math­e­mat­i­cal lens for under­stand­ing the world.

Kate is even on the edi­to­r­i­al board for the Math­e­mat­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca’s Math Val­ues blog. Bridg­ing the gap between aca­d­e­m­ic math­e­mat­ics and the every­day world. She and I had so much to talk about and I have to admit, I total­ly fan­girled the inter­view. She is so awe­some, and we have since decid­ed that we’re def­i­nite­ly going to have to have pod­cast again because this one.

Was way too much fun. That being said, in this episode, we’re gonna dive into Kate’s jour­ney, her pas­sion for mak­ing math relat­able and how she applies math­e­mat­i­cal think­ing to busi­ness, cre­ativ­i­ty, and life itself. Let’s wel­come Kate Ert­mann of Kate loves Math to Math! Sci­ence! History!

Kate Ert­mann with Kate Loves Math.

It is such a joy to have you on Math! Sci­ence! His­to­ry! I’ve been read­ing your blog and I feel like you and I con­nect because we have so much in com­mon. We are both for­mer actress­es and we both just love math. So how are you today?

Kate Ert­mann: I’m doing okay. And and I, every­thing you just said, I com­plete­ly 100000000% agree with because I think it’s unusu­al that, what do you call it?

Venn dia­gram of pro­fes­sion­al actor and some­one who loves math and likes to talk about math with oth­er peo­ple and get excit­ed about math. Those two things. It’s rare. It’s rare.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: It is. It is real­ly rare and some­times, okay, now we’re just going off the ques­tions. I’m lis­ten­ing to that some­times, like if you’re ever out with some­body, you go into math and they have no idea what you’re talk­ing about.

Do you ever expe­ri­ence that?

Kate Ert­mann: I think more like some­one will be like, prob­lem try­ing to prob­lem solve some­thing. You go out with friends and they’re like, oh, this hap­pened today, or. I am work­ing with this per­son and try­ing to do that, and so much of my math research and writ­ing is what I’ve actu­al­ly just recent­ly learned is called socio­physics or referred to as sociophysics.

So it’s using math and math tools to, to try to under­stand human behav­ior and soci­etal phe­nom­e­non and things like that. And that’s just, that’s what I’m drawn to is about the math of rela­tion­ships. So when I’m out with friends and my hus­band knows this also, that he’ll see it in my face where some­one’s talk­ing about how I don’t know how to do this or how to do that, and how can this kind of rela­tion­ship thing exist.

What­ev­er, and I’ll just be sit­ting there ha, want­i­ng to say some­thing, but I’ve been here before and I know for a cou­ple drinks in, no one’s gonna hear it. They’re just gonna look at me and be like, Aw, Kate, Kate, and your fun lit­tle math stuff. I’m like, but I can help you.

So, yeah. Yeah.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Oh my gosh. The bit­ing of the tongue. I am all too famil­iar with that one. Yes. Yes.

Kate Ert­mann: And it’s, you know, I mean, it’s also just want­i­ng to talk and be heard. They don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly, they’re not ask­ing for assis­tance or sup­port in any very spe­cif­ic way. So I’m like, mm-hmm. I’ll just, I’ll wait to see if some­one asks me, then I can help or offer help or whatever.

And some­times it’s just, it’s tak­en me a while to under­stand that this isn’t a, that math is not fas­ci­nat­ing for every­one. Weird. I don’t get it, but

Gabrielle Bir­chak: I don’t either.

Kate Ert­mann: Sup­pos­ed­ly. Appar­ent­ly it’s not. Yeah, I’ll just keep it to myself. Maybe make a note on the side and think, oh, maybe I’ll write some­thing about that sort of situation.

Change the names.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: But don’t peo­ple real­ize that math is where the par­ty’s at?

Kate Ert­mann: Girl. Yes. I mean, I actu­al­ly, I think so many times peo­ple think the par­ty’s at sci­ence and I’m like, yeah, there’s a par­ty there, but there’d be no sci­ence par­ty if there was­n’t a math par­ty first, so,

Gabrielle Bir­chak: exact­ly. Mm-hmm. And there’s always that whole drink­ing and deriv­ing thing.

Mm-hmm. It says fun, like drink­ing and deriving.

Kate Ert­mann: Drink­ing and deriv­ing. Now that’s a good name for some­thing. Maybe not a band, but, Hmm. I’m mak­ing a note.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Here you go. I don’t know, maybe, maybe we could have it adjunct pod­cast together.

Kate Ert­mann: Okay. I seri­ous­ly, I’m mak­ing a note. I real­ly like that. Drink­ing and deriving.

Wow. Hap­py hour. Hmm. I’m lik­ing this.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Go on. Okay, so I wan­na find out. You were a for­mer actress. Mm-hmm. And then you became a busi­ness design­er orga­niz­er. Yeah.

Kate Ert­mann: Yeah. Well, there’s also 3D ani­ma­tion in between that

Gabrielle Bir­chak: and then the 3D ani­ma­tion. Give me a lowdown

Kate Ert­mann: I will

Gabrielle Bir­chak: on, on your life sto­ry. I, I, I wan­na hear all of this.

Kate Ert­mann: So, grew up in New York on Long Island from the ages of about sev­en to I wan­na say 16 ish. I was a pro­fes­sion­al child actor in New York. Did lots and lots of com­mer­cials and Broad­way and a cou­ple soap operas, and I was just, I was a work­ing actor and there’d be times I’d be out­ta school for peri­ods of time and have to catch up on oth­er things.

Went to col­lege in Ohio, Ohio Uni­ver­si­ty. Went to get my degree in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions. That’s what it was called in the late eight­ies. But basi­cal­ly radio, tv, broad­cast­ing, things that are tools and stuff that are obso­lete now. But I real­ized there was more pow­er behind the cam­era. And then I, after work­ing a bit after, col­lege in kind of doc­u­men­tary film work, I moved to Port­land, Oregon.

At that time, there was a lot of infomer­cial production.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Okay.

Kate Ert­mann: So I came to Port­land because there was so much work here. That’s where I still am. There was so much work here doing that type of work. Plus there was a lot of movies of the week that were com­ing up. Remem­ber Movies of the Week?

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Aww. I do. Oh my gosh.

Kate Ert­mann: Yeah. They were shoot­ing a lot of them in Port­land at this time because of state incen­tives for the pro­duc­tion to come up from LA and it was before Cana­da, Van­cou­ver start­ed doing all their big incen­tives. So they were com­ing to Port­land a bunch and they want­ed just to fig­ure out like how they could put some­thing more.

In there dur­ing this time when a lot of peo­ple, I guess, were chang­ing the sta­tion, because infomer­cials always felt like a TV show or some, that’s why you stayed and watched them. That was right at the time when Toy Sto­ry came out and some­how these worlds col­lid­ed of 3D ani­ma­tion and being able to show the inner work­ings of a vac­u­um or how a Boflex machine works, stuff like that. And in pro­duc­ing those com­mer­cials, the 3D ani­ma­tors that I could find were amaz­ing cre­atives. And some of them were like dan­ger­ous enough to know how to invoice for their work and track their hours. And a cou­ple of them start­ed an ani­ma­tion com­pa­ny, 3D ani­ma­tion company.

And as so many things hap­pen in life, you get asked a ques­tion at one point in your life that you’re like, yes, I’m gonna do that. And so I was asked to be their part­ner in this 3D ani­ma­tion com­pa­ny. And I said, yeah, yeah, I’ll do that. And I end­ed up doing that for 15 years and love 3D ani­ma­tion because though I’m not a 3D ani­ma­tor and nev­er became a 3D ani­ma­tor, I knew how to talk about it because it’s this beau­ti­ful mix of math sci­ence and cre­ative and I just, I flip­pin loved it and I still love it. Yeah. So the oth­er part­ners left and I end­ed up run­ning this ani­ma­tion com­pa­ny on my own some­how. So did that 15 years, sold the com­pa­ny, then went on to do the orga­ni­za­tion­al design with star­tups. So I. Basi­cal­ly that’s what I learned from all those years of the ani­ma­tion world of run­ning a com­pa­ny, was that the part I real­ly enjoyed was putting the struc­ture of it togeth­er, the blue­print of it, and I liked work­ing with folks who had this great idea and they were able to get fund­ing, but they did­n’t know how to build the com­pa­ny part of it. And I loved work­ing, espe­cial­ly with females. I want­ed to allow them to be able to work on their prod­uct or their ser­vice and they could get their fund­ing. And I could just be in the back­ground mak­ing all the spread­sheets, design­ing it out for five years doing the infra­struc­ture of this is how you would do hir­ing and mak­ing that, and then giv­ing that to them.

And my last task would always be hir­ing the COO. Basi­cal­ly be tak­ing all the stuff that I had made, I’d hand it to them. Then I’d kind of just walk back­wards out­ta the build­ing and be like, bye, good luck. And then go on to the next one. And I did that for like close to sev­en years, I would say, and it was dur­ing pan­dem­ic times that I start­ed doing Kate Loves Math.

There you go. That’s my long sto­ry. It’s

Gabrielle Bir­chak: gone very well because now you’re on the edi­to­r­i­al board of the Math­e­mat­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion Amer­i­ca’s Blog Col­umn Math Matters.

Kate Ert­mann: I have. That was the scari­est part for me. Like for real, it was that the math­e­mati­cians would, quote unquote, find me out, know that I do not have an advanced degree in mathematics.

Yeah. Open arms. I went to one of their, went to Math Fest in 2023 I think it was, and Wow, what a love­ly group of humans. You found this lit­tle thing to talk about and you start geek­ing out togeth­er, and then Yes, they’re under­stand­ing. They’re like, wait, you don’t have a advanced math degree, and I’m all sheepish.

I’m like, no, I do not, but I read all like “You’re a math­e­mati­cian.” “Oh, no, no I’m not.” “Yes you are.” “You think, you breathe, you love math­e­mat­ics, and that’s a math­e­mati­cian.” and I real­ized, oh, I’m talk­ing to peo­ple who are Gen X, my gen­er­a­tion or younger. And I real­ized in my head, math­e­mati­cian equaled of course, like old­er white guy who’s cur­mud­geony, crab­by, and would be push­ing back on me say­ing, I did all this.

That’s, if you did­n’t do all that, there’s no way you’re a math­e­mati­cian like me. I found out that, oh no, there’s actu­al real humans now that are love­ly math­e­mati­cians and don’t feel all defen­sive about that. They have these advanced degrees and I don’t, they just are hap­py that there’s this enjoy­ment about math that we can share

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Exact­ly.

That’s a world that embraces us because I don’t have advanced degrees in math.

Kate Ert­mann: Yeah.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: I think we’re just stuck with that stereo­type in our head. ’cause that’s the envi­ron­ment we grew up in.

Kate Ert­mann: Right.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: It’s like a math­e­mati­cian is some­body with a PhD who’s been teach­ing in the pro­fes­so­r­i­al area?

Kate Ert­mann: Yeah.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: For 20 some years. It’s like, no, no, we live, eat, and breathe this stuff. We are math­e­mati­cians. Yes.

Kate Ert­mann: Yes. Exact­ly. Exact­ly. And it’s, I feel like it’s just recent­ly that I’ve owned that. And when I am post­ing or I’m writ­ing an email or what­ev­er, I will iden­ti­fy myself as, I’m a math­e­mati­cian. My name is Kate Ertmann.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: You are! And here’s the thing, here’s what I wan­na, ’cause it’s Wom­en’s His­to­ry Month.

Kate Ert­mann: Yes.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: And I know that as women we’re often. Put in the cor­ner, nobody puts baby in the cor­ner. We’re often put in the cor­ner and you know, made to feel less than because we are women in the lab or women in academia.

How did you come to terms with imposter syn­drome and how did you just get over those lit­tle nag­ging thoughts in the back? ’cause I have mine, I have my imposter syn­drome thoughts in the back of my head all the time. Yeah.

How do you get over that?

Kate Ert­mann: Ha ha ha ha ha. Um.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Is that a touchy subject?

Kate Ert­mann: No, no, no, no. It’s not a touchy sub­ject at all. It real­ly isn’t. I think that my pause is because I don’t believe that a hun­dred per­cent have got­ten over it, but I would say that cer­tain­ly hav­ing a good group of friends or col­leagues, peers that you know, will basi­cal­ly. Almost get upset with you if you talk down about your­self and about your accomplishments.

So I have a healthy group of folks who have basi­cal­ly one step below berate me for when I talk down about any­thing and I’m like about myself. I’m like, oh, okay. Cool. Got it. I got it, got it, got it. I’m good at this. I’m good at this. This is I’m, yes, I’m just as good. And for me, it start­ed with being in the tech com­mu­ni­ty and being in high tech and start­up community.

And again, being with. Oth­er women. Once you have oth­er peo­ple con­firm the, those deep thoughts where you’re ques­tion­ing stuff and you have oth­er peo­ple con­firm. Yeah, I was think­ing that too. It just, it helps wash it away out of yourself.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: We’ll be right back after a quick word from my advertisers.

One of my favorite mantras.

 My broth­er uses Be Afraid and Do it anyway.

Kate Ert­mann: Oh, that’s real­ly good. Oh, that’s real­ly, real­ly good. Yeah. Oh, I love that.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Well, that’s a Steve Bir­chak quote, just to let you know.

Kate Ert­mann: I love it.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Yeah, you are afraid. There we go.

Kate Ert­mann: Tak­ing out my pen, writ­ing that one down. Be afraid to do it anyway.

Hmm. Which of course for a long time I would say that I was the monarch of study­ing the risk out of risk. So of course when I would final­ly fig­ure out how to make that jump to do this thing, because I would be like, okay, I would do this. If this hap­pens, I, this, this hap­pens, these oppor­tu­ni­ties would go away.

So yeah, this kind of goes with it where. Be afraid. You say be afraid and do it anyway.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Yeah. Be afraid and do it anyway.

Kate Ert­mann: That’s what I need to, that’s gonna replace my ten­den­cy to study the risk at risk, because I miss the oppor­tu­ni­ties because of that.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Oh, oh my gosh.

Kate Ert­mann: Right.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Okay. So you, like you say, you’re the monarch of eval­u­at­ing the risk out of risk.

That’s the tech brain. That’s a tech thing right there, because you’re always look­ing for what fires do we have going on down the road

Kate Ert­mann: mm-hmm.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: That we’re going to need to address once we go down this path.

Kate Ert­mann: Mm-hmm. I’m def­i­nite­ly sys­tems ori­ent­ed per­son. I love build­ing sys­tems. That’s why I loved doing the orga­ni­za­tion­al design work of build­ing a sys­tem for a com­pa­ny, essentially.

And any­time you build a sys­tem, any­time you build a project plan, what­ev­er, it’s going to go, maybe not off the rails, but it’s not gonna go accord­ing to plan. It’s, it just won’t. And I would get excus­es from a lot of cre­atives actu­al­ly, who would say, it’s nev­er gonna go the way that I plan it to, so why both­er mak­ing a plan?

And I’m like, ah, you need to make a plan because you need to know when, you need to be aware of when it goes off the plan. And then that way, maybe you don’t know exact­ly what to do, but you know that some­thing is not going accord­ing to plan. You know, visu­al­ly think about it. If you go, if you’re hik­ing on a trail and you take the wrong path off that trail, it bifur­cates or some­thing, then the soon­er you know the eas­i­er it is to get back to that, to the point that you wan­na be at.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Yeah, I love that. So it’s like there could be a fire here, we’re gonna re-nav­i­gate once we see that fire.

Kate Ert­mann: Yeah. And you may not, you may be able maybe. Just going on past the fire, like sweet. I can tell you team that we actu­al­ly passed that poten­tial fire. Five days ago. It’s not that hard to cre­ate a plan, just cre­ate a plan, know where you wan­na go, and either reverse engi­neer it or fig­ure out like what the main stop­ping points are along the way and how long that’ll take.

And yeah, I know, again, this is my, I try not to be all like, how do you not know this? Which is the hard­est thing. It just feels so log­i­cal to me. But then I real­ized that there’s so much cre­ative, there’s a lot of cre­ative stuff I’m I am good at and I feel for­tu­nate that I have spent so much time in the cre­ative world, but there’s also a bunch of cre­ative things that I can­not nev­er­mind, do not want to do, like draw­ing or painting.

That kind of stuff is very frus­trat­ing to me. I find no relax­ation at it and

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Oh my God,

Kate Ert­mann: I’ve had so many artists, friends who are artists say, oh, just take this. Let’s go and do one of those fun, like what are they that you drink wine and you paint pic­ture thing.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Oh my I hate those.

Kate Ert­mann: That sounds like hell. I nev­er ever want to do that. That is horrible.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: I did it once and I was nau­seous and it was­n’t the wine that made me sick. It was the experience.

Kate Ert­mann: Yep, exact­ly. I’m just like, this is not what’s in my head. I can’t do this the way I want to. Just be free with it, Kate, what­ev­er it could be. No. No, I’ll not. I can relax, but this is not how I relax.

This is this. No,

Gabrielle Bir­chak: exact­ly.

Kate Ert­mann: No, no, no, no.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Gimme a good math book and I’ll sit down and I’m so relaxed.

Kate Ert­mann: I’m so relaxed. I’m like, oh my brain’s, this is stim­u­lat­ing and I can under­stand this, and then I can just close the book. Take a nap. Think about it. Oh, I can use this. That’s love­ly. God.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Now I love read­ing your blog.

It is just so won­der­ful. And the aster­isk tell. Tell me more about the asterisk.

Kate Ert­mann: Well, if you had­n’t, you had­n’t real­ized it yet. I can go off on tan­gents a bit and to me they are impor­tant to the just of a whole sto­ry, so, most of my essays. Yeah, I have them. I think maybe one or two don’t. And they are just those moments that reminds me of this.

So it could be a ref­er­ence to some some­thing in base­ball ’cause I love base­ball and it might, and so, so it’s some­thing that’s not, , inte­gral to under­stand­ing what­ev­er the main top­ic is of this essay. If you know me at all, and if you are some­one who enjoys my lit­tle off sense of humor. That’s where you’ll real­ly get a lot of my per­son­al­i­ty is in the asterisk,

Gabrielle Bir­chak: But let’s talk about math. Okay. Those asterisks.

Kate Ert­mann: Yeah.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: You say they’re not inte­gral, but if you think about math, oh boy. Math has every­thing that we know about math to this point has been brought to us through foun­da­tions over the years, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it’s like all our entire math­e­mat­i­cal foun­da­tions are built on aster­isks, on Kate’s asterisks.

All these aster­isks have built up your blog. Much like math over the years is built up where we are today.

Kate Ert­mann: Oh my God. You are giv­ing me the best. I can’t wait to hear this, uh, pod­cast back. ’cause I’m gonna just rip out that part and then put that on the aster­isk page of you describ­ing that because that’s perfect.

Yes. Like an aster­isk. This part. Oh boy. Oh, the pos­si­bil­i­ties. Oppor­tu­ni­ties. This is great. Yeah. Hit me in the right place there. I’m like, that is it.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Yeah. That’s what your aster­isks are. They’re foun­da­tion­al. It’s like when you read, okay. You read a math book and you know how it has an equa­tion, and then it has a let­ter with in paren­the­ses on the side.

Kate Ert­mann: Mm-hmm.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Because it ref­er­ences a sec­ond equation.

Kate Ert­mann: Yeah.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: You know what I’m talk­ing about.

Kate Ert­mann: Excel­lent.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: That’s exact­ly what your aster­isks are. Oh,

Kate Ert­mann: oh my. See, I feel like they’re. Or that they’re more flip­pant things. But now that I think about it, there’s def­i­nite­ly times while I’m writ­ing, I’m like, that’s too off course.

I’m not gonna put that in as an aster­isk. Yeah, it does sup­port. Gosh, you’re, you’re awesome.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Well, that’s how I see. That’s why I love, that’s why I want­ed to bring up that ques­tion, because I love these aster­isks. They’re like, oh my gosh. It’s like read­ing a math book. This is so cool.

Kate Ert­mann: Thank you! I love it. I love it.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: We’ll be right back after a quick word from my advertisers.

I love this blog because you go into chaos and it’s one of my favorite sub­jects. Tell me about your blog and what inspired it and how you have this affin­i­ty for chaos.

Kate Ert­mann: Yeah, so I’m a lit­tle obsessed with it, with chaos, the lin­guis­tics of it.

Okay, so I first read about chaos. And read about dynam­ics and all of that stuff in Steven Stro­gatz one of his books and such a fan­tas­tic explain­er of math­e­mat­ics. His more well-known books are, I’m say­ing this now, I’m like spin­ning my chair around. What’s the X one? Oh, help me out here.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Joy of X.

Kate Ert­mann: Joy of X. Found it! Yes. Joy of X. He’s writ­ten a bunch of books and he’s writes for New York Times. Amaz­ing, amaz­ing math­e­mati­cian. And he first wrote, though, the first thing I read by him that he wrote before, Joy of X is a book called Cal­cu­lus of Friend­ship. And it is this such, this per­son­al, beau­ti­ful book about this rela­tion­ship he had with his cal­cu­lus teacher in high school, and there is a sec­tion that he talks about how he start­ed focus­ing in dynam­ics and telling his high school teacher about that and the way he talked about it was such pas­sion and joy in all the dis­cov­ery of it, and also chaos being in the scope of all the dif­fer­ent math­e­mat­i­cal the­o­ries and con­cepts out there.

That chaos is rel­a­tive­ly young. It’s like a lit­tle over 50 years old com­pared to hun­dreds and hun­dreds of years old for many oth­er con­cepts and the­o­ries. And when he described that chaos is not about some­thing being out­ta con­trol, that it’s about a new pat­tern being devel­oped and it’s actu­al­ly very in control.

And here’s all the things that prove that it’s some­thing that’s in con­trol. I real­ized I just had that moment of, well, why do peo­ple say some­thing is chaot­ic? Espe­cial­ly peo­ple who are sports announc­ers. I watch a lot of motor sports and every time some­one would say, oh, it’s get­ting chaot­ic, or That was chaotic.

Any­thing chaot­ic. I, again, very expres­sive per­son and espe­cial­ly when you’re around peo­ple that you’re com­fort­able with, like your part­ner and some close friends. I would, not inward­ly, but like very out­ward­ly be rolling my eyes, and it’s that whole like, actu­al­ly, that’s not the right use of the word and whatever.

Yes, I would do that, and it just became one of those, I don’t know, glow­ing words in the sky that only I could see. I start­ed just dig­ging into it and teach­ing myself more and more about, and learn­ing more and more about it. The big boom for me about it all is that, oh, chaos is not math­e­mat­i­cal chaos. True chaos is not only about things being in con­trol, that is just a new pat­tern has devel­oped, but that it has steps to it.

And when some­thing does go chaot­ic, well that does­n’t mean that we, out­side of this, that are watch­ing it, it does not mean that we have no pow­er. Does­n’t mean that we put our hands up and say, oh, well that got chaot­ic and or it is chaot­ic and what are you gonna do when chaos hap­pens in real life? I so strong­ly believe that it gets me crazy

one, when some­one uses the word chaos incor­rect­ly and usu­al­ly they use it to incite peo­ple to get all, it’s crazy. It’s out­ta con­trol. It’s like, no, it’s not. It’s actu­al­ly in con­trol. That would be dis­or­der. When you see some­thing and you think it’s chaos, no, it’s dis­or­der. Whole oth­er sto­ry with disorder.

But with chaos, not only does it mean that there’s new pat­tern devel­op­ing, it means that you can actu­al­ly eval­u­ate it, see how far along it is, and there’s all these dif­fer­ent things of check­ing this. There’s strange attrac­tors and there’s basin of attrac­tion, and there’s these very mathy words and mathy phras­es that can be applied to real life, that you can eval­u­ate how far along this tra­jec­to­ry of chaos is, and you can do some­thing to change.

You’re not gonna change every­thing and you’re not gonna, you are not gonna stomp it out or it’s not going to go away. Again, the train’s left the sta­tion, but you can absolute­ly most cer­tain­ly nudge it. Nudge it to get off that lit­tle path that it’s on, or you can change. The out­come, the final out­come of where that tra­jec­to­ry is going.

And so I believe we have pow­er when chaos is around. And right now there’s some chaos going on.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: My gosh, I know. And all we can do is con­trol our own chaos. But I love that you bring up nudg­ing things. Yeah. It’s the whole con­cept of when there’s attractors

Kate Ert­mann: Yeah.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: in chaos. And how it cre­ates a pat­tern that devel­ops with­in that chaot­ic system.

Kate Ert­mann: Yeah.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: And all it takes is a lit­tle nudge. Yeah. To make it go in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion. So it’s empow­er­ing, actu­al­ly, what you’re talk­ing about is very empowering.

Kate Ert­mann: I agree. I agree. So many times when some­thing hap­pens and that’s upset­ting and cer­tain­ly you feel like you don’t have any con­trol, but rarely.

Espe­cial­ly those of us that have priv­i­lege and have posi­tion in the world com­pared to the major­i­ty of oth­ers, we do have pow­er to do some­thing. Is it easy? No. Do we have to make this nudge that we’re gonna do? Does that need to become a pri­or­i­ty? If we’re gonna actu­al­ly, if the nudge is going to nudge and have a result that we want to have, yeah.

It’s not gonna be some­thing you can just. Like you take out the garbage, you’re like, oh yeah, I got­ta do that lit­tle nudge thing. No, we’re gonna, it’s gonna need to be a col­lec­tive, prob­a­bly a com­mu­ni­ty com­ing togeth­er to work on it togeth­er. But are we pow­er­less? Absolute­ly not. We have pow­er. We have power.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Yes. Yes. Now, back to the con­cept of dis­or­der. Do you think we have pow­er over disorder?

Kate Ert­mann: Nah. I mean, dis­or­der is, that dis­or­der will hap­pen. This all hap­pens in com­plex sys­tems and events hap­pen and they will be dis­or­der­ly or they could be chaot­ic, and dis­or­der is slip­ping on. The banana peel dis­or­der is. Uh, car acci­dent or lose your wal­let, whatever.

But when it’s a pat­tern that keeps hap­pen­ing over and over and like an exact pat­tern, so I’ll say to some­one, yeah, you might slip on a banana peel every day, but unless that banana peel, I mean, one, wow, you’re clum­sy. Watch where you’re going. But two, for it to be a chaot­ic. Chaos going on in your life with that banana peel.

That banana peel would have to be in the exact same place every sin­gle day. And same time, like all the vari­ables have to be exact­ly the same every day, and the con­di­tion’s exact­ly the same every time it hap­pens to you. If oth­er­wise, it’s just dis­or­der. It’s still real­ly annoy­ing, but it’s also a very com­mon part of life.

And the thing with dis­or­der, I find. That hap­pens is that if you do get in a car acci­dent a few times a year and it is in the same area of town, we have a ten­den­cy to want to avoid fix­ing some­thing, not even fix­ing, avoid, like try­ing to fig­ure out the rem­e­dy to why that was hap­pen­ing and just as humans, and instead, we will do these workarounds, that will usu­al­ly take more time.

’cause you’re not gonna, you refuse to dri­ve through that area of town any­more. So you’re gonna. Take the high­way that goes around or what­ev­er it might be.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Or write the city. So they put in a street­light, you know, let’s nudge it.

Kate Ert­mann: Yes, exact­ly. Yeah, exact­ly. I mean, you can nudge in dis­or­der, but it’s much eas­i­er to just be like, la, la, la.

Just let it keep hap­pen­ing to oth­er peo­ple. And I will go over here and it’s like, but noth­ing fixed. What was hap­pen­ing there? So. Oy.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: I don’t know if you think about it. Could dis­or­der pos­si­bly be an ele­ment of chaos that can be rec­ti­fied through nudg­ing? Could we nudge dis­or­der into a state of chaos so that it is manageable?

I, no, now I’m just throw­ing out ideas.

Kate Ert­mann: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I would, I could have an answer to that if I read my chap­ter on dis­or­der because I can’t remem­ber off the top of my head. Um, uh, my instinct is to say, to say no to your ques­tion because why Kate? Why is it not. It has. Yeah. It has some­thing to do with the dynam­ics of the sys­tem, how it’s effective.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Okay.

Kate Ert­mann: But I don’t know what it is off­hand ’cause my brain and mem­o­ry are for shit.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Mm-hmm. Well, it’s not even, I’m not even noon. We haven’t had our, our cof­fee and, you

know.

Kate Ert­mann: But do you do that also? Like, I do this, I actu­al­ly relate to my hus­band and my, my hus­band’s a writer also, and he and some oth­er friends who are writ­ers where when you’ve not read some­thing that you wrote for a while, you put it out there and then you come back to it and you read it and you’re like, damn, that’s good.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Oh my gosh. Late­ly I’ve been say­ing that a lot. I’m like, I obvi­ous­ly did­n’t write this when I had AI because this is real­ly good.

Kate Ert­mann: This just real­ly good.

That’s just, I have got­ten to the point, and I’m okay if this goes in the pod­cast. I have got­ten to the point in writ­ing as some­one who has gone through menopause, which I am, I dun­no if I’m proud to say, but I know it’s part of being a woman. I’m fine.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: We’ve sur­vived it.

Yes.

Kate Ert­mann: Yeah.

Yes, exact­ly. And I’m lucky.

I did not have a lot of out­ward­ly phys­i­cal things that came up for me that changed, that were symp­toms or results or what­ev­er of menopause. But the big one for me was that the fog brain and my brain just, whoa. Just, it was amaz­ing how long it would take me to write a sim­ple email would take me tru­ly three hours to write, and it was very, very frustrating.

Any­way, one the things that now that I’m on the oth­er side of it and HRTs, I love my hor­mones, don’t take them away from me. Um, the thing I start­ed doing was when I would have, when I would be doing research, I would start putting my ini­tials, my own ini­tials, but KE colon, and then I would write my notes and then I’m con­tin­u­ing do research.

And so. I would know when I would go back and look at those notes. ’cause I keep them cat­e­go­rized where I have things about chaos and where I have things about dis­or­der or I have things about par­al­lels, what­ev­er. I’d go back and I would read, I’d be like, oh, this is from, this is research, from this book, whatever.

And then I would real­ize, oh, that’s a con­clu­sion I wrote of my own. And I know it’s not from the book because I wrote KE next to it, but do I remem­ber actu­al­ly writ­ing it? No, not at all. I don’t remem­ber hav­ing a thought. I don’t remem­ber that. That’s my con­clu­sion. So, um, yeah, I tried to like, I don’t know what that’s, there’s got­ta be a name for it.

Of not­ing, like denot­ing or, or mak­ing. Basi­cal­ly putting these lit­tle reminders down like, no, this is your con­clu­sion. Good job Kate. Like Kate from two years ago. Like, good job say­ing future Kate.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: I like that. That is bril­liant. Yeah. Yeah. I used just put a star next to it. That’s how I know it. To mine, it’s got a lit­tle star next to it

Kate Ert­mann: and you know that that’s what comes after the stars is your own.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Yeah.

Kate Ert­mann: Put a note on it

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Yeah.

Kate Ert­mann: Mm-hmm.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: And, and then I have the flags, the sticky flags. Oh, yeah. And I have all these flags in all my books. Mm-hmm. And I know, like the pink ones are mine.

Kate Ert­mann: Oh, I like that. Oh, that’s real­ly good. See, I go col­or cod­ing on my sticky tabs with like sub­jects. Inter­est­ing. So I have, so if I am writ­ing, I assign what­ev­er a col­or to a cer­tain essay, a cer­tain top­ic, I’ll put those in the dif­fer­ent books and on some of those sticky tabs, they’re all of a sud­den I come across a KE colon. I’m like, oh, okay. That’s my con­clu­sion about that. That’s actu­al­ly not right for the book, huh? We all have our process­es and

Gabrielle Bir­chak: You’re an active read­er. That’s won­der­ful. I love that.

Kate Ert­mann: Oh boy do I read? I love it.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Oh my gosh.

Kate Ert­mann: Deli­cious.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: We’ll be right back after a quick word from my advertisers.

What was the most unex­pect­ed place where you found math?

Kate Ert­mann: Unex­pect­ed? I do go back to har­mo­ny all the time because not so much har­mo­ny when … And it is Har­mo­ny. Okay. I am, I’m, I’m just gonna put a line in the sand. There it is. Harmony.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Okay.

Kate Ert­mann: So I, I mean, I would say obvi­ous­ly har­mo­ny, any­thing I’m hav­ing to do with music, there’s math in it that seems obvi­ous to me.

That be it, the notes on a scale or just so many dif­fer­ent things are math­e­mat­i­cal in music. But with har­mo­ny, specif­i­cal­ly, when I real­ized that I could talk to folks on a team in the work­place, on a busi­ness team, or again, like in a com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tion, what­ev­er it might be, that it’s a talk­ing about har­mo­ny and sync or even sports.

I have done it with sports where har­mo­ny is all about there being mea­sured being at least three parts, and it could be more than that, but at least three parts.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Mm-hmm.

Kate Ert­mann: Which could be three peo­ple that are very much indi­vid­u­als. So when you think about har­mo­ny music, they’re different

Gabrielle Bir­chak: notes,

Kate Ert­mann: yeah. And that have a math­e­mat­i­cal rea­son why that they sounds so great togeth­er, it cre­ates such bal­ance. So when I would talk about teams or I would talk to a, a leader of a team, again, being in a, in busi­ness or in sports or in a com­mu­ni­ty, what­ev­er it might be, I. I would ask, okay, do you want your team to be in sync or do you want to be in harmony?

’cause a lot of times peo­ple use that inter­change­ably, those two words. So a lot of lead­ers in a cre­ate a ser­vice indus­try, like in an agency or some­thing, would say to me, okay, yes, I want to have a har­mon­ic team. I’d say, great. So the thing that you need to remem­ber is that when some­one leaves the com­pa­ny, leaves the team.

What­ev­er it might be. That means then the next per­son to fill that posi­tion is either going to need to be exact­ly that piece of pie, that now that left, they need to be exact­ly that, for that to be har­mo­nious again. Or folks who are left behind either gonna need to be able to take up that oth­er part of the har­mon­ic part that left.

There are oth­ers that can take over for that miss­ing voice. And then I can go into a whole thing about how you write up.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: I love that

Kate Ert­mann: job descrip­tions. You got­ta write them up so they’re not about an indi­vid­ual need to write ’em about the responsibilities.

But then I get into a whole nerdy thing about orga­ni­za­tion­al design, and I’m not gonna do that to you right now.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Okay.

Now you have anoth­er pod­cast with you. We’ll go over orga­ni­za­tion­al design because I love this top­ic. Wow. I love it. Okay, so I know we need to wrap this up, but it gets me think­ing about when com­pa­nies lose employees.

Kate Ert­mann: Yes.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Because when one per­son leaves, then sta­tis­tics show if one per­son leaves

Kate Ert­mann: mm-hmm.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: More peo­ple are gonna leave.

Kate Ert­mann: Mm-hmm.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: And then all of a sud­den you got­ta restruc­ture every­thing all over again.

Kate Ert­mann: Uhhuh.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: So this is gonna def­i­nite­ly be anoth­er podcast.

Kate Ert­mann: Okay, cool. Real­ly? I, I got so much to say about that. So yeah. Awe­some. Next time.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Oh my God.

Kate Ert­mann: Next time on drink­ing and deriving.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Drink­ing and deriving.

Kate Ert­mann: I love it. It’s so, that’s such a great title and it’s,

Gabrielle Bir­chak: thank you

Kate Ert­mann: love ’cause peo­ple are gonna be like drink­ing and dri­ving. That’s not okay. Like, no, no, no, no, no. Drink­ing and deriving.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Deriv­ing

Kate Ert­mann: and it’s like lit­tle wink. Haha. We’re math nerds.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Well, before we wrap up, how can peo­ple find you? How can they find Kate loves math on the interwebs?

Kate Ert­mann: Mm-hmm.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Or even your speak­ing gigs.

Kate Ert­mann: Yeah. Cool. Pri­mar­i­ly, you can always find me and find my work at KateLovesMath.com. So there’s videos and there’s audio stuff and of course all the essays and there’s the Short Stuff, my Math­nif­i­cent Wows, which are just one word.

Quick lit­tle bites of just this argu­ment or what­ev­er. Okay. It’s just, here’s the math­e­mat­i­cal appli­ca­tion applied to real life. There’s that kind of stuff. But the socials make me angry because that stu­pid algo­rithm changes all the time and or you’re a B test while some­one else is being A test­ed, who knows?

And just when you think you fig­ure out, here’s how I can use this to spread the beau­ty of math to oth­ers it changes. So LinkedIn is a place where I com­mu­ni­cate a lot and have great con­ver­sa­tions, and then these days I’m a huge fan of Blue Sky. It feels like the old days of Twit­ter, and I can, like, I’m just mak­ing these rela­tion­ships with some writ­ers and math­e­mati­cians that I nev­er could on oth­er platforms.

I think just ’cause they’re, every­one’s just try­ing to, just find­ing each oth­er and feel­ing all gid­dy about it. Now, if you had asked me this ques­tion six months ago, I’ve been like, Threads. Threads is where it’s at. That’s where I, it’s like old Twit­ter, blah, blah, blah. Um, and then, yeah, I went down a hole.

So Blue Sky’s where it’s at for me. I am on Insta­gram, some­times I’m on Face­book, some­times. I mean, I have those accounts and I’ll post things there cer­tain­ly, but I’m not as. Active. It’s more out of neces­si­ty. And then I love to speak at con­fer­ences. I love to do pod­casts. And hon­est­ly, I espe­cial­ly love doing panels.

I love hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions, I love hav­ing our inter­views. I love doing stuff like this. I’m just fine and dandy with doing a 20 minute, 40 minute pre­sen­ta­tion talk­ing about chaos in the work­place or talk­ing about using how to bring teams togeth­er that come from dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions. And I’ll say, this is how you do it using math, and this is how you cre­ate these healthy, long-term teams.

But I can do that. And I love doing that. Con­ver­sa­tions are the best.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: The con­ver­sa­tions, the pan­els, the speeches.

Kate Ert­mann: Yeah,

Gabrielle Bir­chak: the web­site. KateLovesMath.com. You’re on all the socials. And then for peo­ple who vis­it your web­site, they got­ta sign up for the newsletter.

Kate Ert­mann: Yes, please.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Because the Math­nif­i­cent Words, the Math­nif­i­cent Words are revelations.

They’re so inspir­ing. I love them. So

Kate Ert­mann: thank you.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Um, if, if you’re lis­ten­ing to this pod­cast, please go to KateLovesMath.com and sign up for the newslet­ter and get the Math­nif­i­cent Words are so wonderful.

Kate Ert­mann: Yes, please. And just, yeah, even like unabashed­ly, y’all know the more sub­scribers you get the bet­ter that every­body knows how it works.

I have this list of my Top 10 Books.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Yes.

Kate Ert­mann: And why they’re my Top 10 Math Books. And you can get that and sub­scribe at the same time, which is a love­ly lit­tle thing and peo­ple can unsub­scribe at any time. But I send two emails a month. It’s not a ton. Uh, it’s,

Gabrielle Bir­chak: it’s not a lot.

Kate Ert­mann: It’s just enough to just to say, Hey, I’m think­ing of this.

And. Uh, have you thought about this and it’s great.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: And keep the math brain going.

Kate Ert­mann: Exact­ly.

Gabrielle Bir­chak: Exact­ly. So I don’t know how to close this out because I’m hav­ing so much fun and I don’t wan­na hang up, but I guess I should stop record­ing now. Okay. Okay.

…

and that brings us to the end of today’s episode with the bril­liant Kate Ertmann.

If you loved our con­ver­sa­tion and wan­na keep explor­ing math in a fun and acces­si­ble way be sure to check out her blog at KateLovesMath.com. There you’ll find her Math­nif­i­cent Word of the day where she breaks down quirky, sur­pris­ing and thought pro­vok­ing math­e­mat­i­cal terms and shows how they apply to real life.

You can also find her infor­ma­tion on her speak­ing and you can reach out to her through that web­site. Again, it is KateLovesMath.com. It’s a fan­tas­tic blog. I’m a big fan, obvi­ous­ly. You can also fol­low Kate on social media. Just search for Kate Loves Math on your favorite plat­forms to get your dai­ly dose of math and wis­dom and wit.

As always, thank you for tun­ing into Math! Sci­ence! His­to­ry!. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t for­get to sub­scribe. Leave a review and share it with fel­low math and sci­ence enthu­si­asts. And remem­ber, math isn’t just in text­books. It’s in the way we think, the way we cre­ate and the way we shape the world around us.

And in today’s case, it’s also a phe­nom­e­nal way to start a friend­ship. Until next time, Carpe diem.

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SHOW NOTES

🔎 Episode Overview

In this episode of Math! Sci­ence! His­to­ry!, I sit down with the bril­liant and engag­ing Kate Ert­mann, the math­e­mati­cian and sto­ry­teller behind Kate Loves Math. We dis­cuss her fas­ci­nat­ing jour­ney from pro­fes­sion­al actress to 3D ani­ma­tion entre­pre­neur to orga­ni­za­tion­al designer—ultimately land­ing in the world of math com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Kate shares how math is embed­ded in every­thing, from human rela­tion­ships to busi­ness struc­tures, and how she embraces the pow­er of chaos in life. Plus, we brain­storm an new pod­cast idea?!

🧠 What You’ll Learn:

• How math is a uni­ver­sal lan­guage that con­nects tech, busi­ness, and cre­ative minds.
• The sur­pris­ing truth about chaos—why it isn’t ran­dom­ness, but a struc­tured sys­tem with patterns.
• How embrac­ing imposter syn­drome and find­ing your unique voice can empow­er you in any field.

🏛 Links & Resources:

🔗 Web­site: KateLovesMath.com
📩 Sign up for her Math­nif­i­cent Words newslet­ter for inspir­ing math insights!
📚 Get her top 10 rec­om­mend­ed math books when you sub­scribe.
📱 Fol­low Kate on:

LinkedIn: Kate Ert­mann

BlueSky: @katelovesmath (sub­ject to change)

Insta­gram & Face­book (when she feels like it!)

🌍 Let’s Connect!

Web­site: mathsciencehistory.com
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mathsciencehistory.bsky.social
Insta­gram: https://www.instagram.com/math.science.history

🎧 Enjoy­ing the Podcast?

If you love Math, Sci­ence, His­to­ry, here’s how you can help:
🌟 Leave a review – It helps more peo­ple dis­cov­er the show!
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Selec­tions from The Lit­tle Prince by Lloyd Rodgers

Until next time, carpe diem!