Letter to Nick Sayers by Sushi


I had more than two “stops” while watching this video, so I’m writing this reflection in that same stop-and-start way, following the moments that made me pause and think. I also genuinely enjoyed watching Susan interview Nick. The pacing, the warmth, the way she lets him linger on ideas without rushing to “wrap it up” reminded me of my journalism days, where the best interviews are the ones that feel like listening rather than extracting.

Stops that made me pause while watching Nick Sayers:
Stop 1: “Math is terrifying” and how early we learn that story

One of the first moments that made me stop was how plainly Sayers names fear, not of “math” as a big abstract thing, but of numbers and arithmetic. That detail matters because it pushes back on the myth that math confidence is just a personal trait you either have or don’t. When he points to how people are taught very early that they’re “bad at math,” it landed as less of a confession and more like a diagnosis of a social script.

Stop 2: The A-level teacher’s line that flips what “advanced math” even is

I paused at the teacher’s comment Nick noted, because it reframes advanced mathematics as something closer to seeing and reasoning than calculating. The idea that once you can “count to three,” the rest becomes visualization, symbols, logic, geometry, and abstraction made me think about how school often reduces math to speed and correctness, even though many mathematical practices are conceptual and representational.

Stop 3: Bicycle Spirograph 4 as a quiet argument about who math is for

When I looked at Bicycle Spirograph 4, it felt like the machine is making a claim: mathematics can be handled, turned, shared, and laughed over. In the Bridges Math Art Gallery entry, Sayers describes building work from repurposed everyday materials to make abstract STEM ideas “relatable, real, and fun,” and Bicycle Spirograph 4 sits exactly there: scrap bicycle parts turned into a participatory curve-maker (Bridges Mathematical Art Gallery, 2020).

What I find important is that this isn’t only pretty loops. In his Bridges conference paper, Sayers connects his bicycle drawing machines to specific families of mathematical curves (including hypotrochoid/spirograph patterns and epitrochoid/reverse spirograph patterns), which gives the work a double identity: accessible for kids, but still mathematically rigorous in what it generates (Sayers, 2020). The work doesn’t simplify math. It changes the doorway.

Stop 4: “Kids like outlines, adults like selfies” and what that reveals about learning

That line made me stop because it’s funny, but it’s also a sharp observation about attention and identity. Kids often enter through contour and tracing, making a shape they can hold onto. Adults often enter through self-display, wanting evidence they were there. Sayers seems to design for both without judging either: a machine that makes participation physical and also produces a large, camera-friendly artifact (Bridges Mathematical Art Gallery, 2020).

Stop 5: Family as the invisible curriculum

The family details Nick noted (brother studied mathematics at Oxford but is also a musician and programmer; father interested in space science and philosophy; mother a Freudian psychologist) made me stop because they show how “math identity” rarely comes from school alone. Even if someone feels afraid of arithmetic, home life can still be thick with math-adjacent ways of thinking, from patterns and systems to meaning-making and emotion.

This is the piece that connects most directly to what I’m interested in: how families shape math dispositions. Research supports the idea that parents’ beliefs and the emotional tone around mathematics are associated with children’s math attitudes and achievement. For example, parents’ beliefs about their child’s math ability and broader parental math beliefs can meaningfully relate to children’s math outcomes (Silver et al., 2020). Similarly, research linking parental beliefs and involvement with children’s motivation and mathematics achievement suggests that family dynamics can influence not only performance but also willingness to engage with math (Peixoto et al., 2024). So when Sayers talks about fear of numbers, superstition, or a teacher reframing math as visualization, I don’t read it as just “his personal story.” I read it as a reminder that math is carried through families as affect, expectations, and identity, long before it is carried as content.

Stop 6: “Making sand castles in a climate crisis”

This one hit like a soft punch. Sandcastles are engineering and geometry disguised as play. But in a climate crisis, they also become a metaphor for impermanence: building anyway, knowing the tide is coming. It made me see Sayers’ repurposed-material practice as more than style. Nick's use of old bikes and everyday materials reads like an ethics of making: precision from leftovers, participation without expensive infrastructure (Bridges Mathematical Art Gallery, 2020; Sayers, 2020).

Sayers’ work made me think about mathematics less as a school subject and more as a social world: who gets to feel at home in it, who learns shame, and how those feelings are built through family talk, classroom comments, and cultural stories about smartness. Bicycle Spirograph 4 is not only a drawing machine. It is an invitation to rehearse a different relationship with math: slower, shared, physical, and proudly imperfect, where the point is to generate a pattern together and realize you were doing math the whole time (Bridges Mathematical Art Gallery, 2020; Sayers, 2020).

References:

Bridges Mathematical Art Gallery. (2020). Nick Sayers: Bicycle Spirograph 4 (2020 Bridges Conference exhibition entry). https://gallery.bridgesmathart.org/exhibitions/2020-bridges-conference/nicksayers

Peixoto, F., Mata, L., Monteiro, V., & Sanches, C. (2024). Am I to blame because my child is not motivated to do math? Associations between parental beliefs and involvement and children’s motivation and mathematics achievement. European Journal of Psychology of Education. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10212-023-00774-6

Sayers, N. (2020). The art and mathematics of cycling: Using old bicycles to draw spirograph patterns. In Bridges 2020 Conference Proceedings. https://archive.bridgesmathart.org/2020/bridges2020-361.html

Silver, A. M., Elliott, L., & Libertus, M. E. (2020). When beliefs matter most: Examining children’s math achievement in the context of parental math beliefs. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 1921. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7572889/

Comments

  1. Susan GerofskyFebruary 21, 2026 at 12:21 PM

    Sushi, you write so beautifully and cogently -- I learn so much from your unique perspectives and connections on things! (And I didn't know you worked as a journalist earlier on. I worked in film production for twelve years too, and did some interviewing there. It's a very different way of thinking about interviews, isn't it? I'm still working on my interview skills, trying not to insert too many of my own stories, though some connections can also be helpful...) I really like the way you frame Nick Sayers' ostensibly personal narratives in terms of family influences (the most important connection to your own research interests) and to societal narratives around being mathematical or not. Beautiful work!

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