"Cold" and "impersonal" are words commonly associated with mathematics. "Funny" is not. The Discrete Observer is an attempt to rescue the image of mathematics and make it more human and humorous. It is brought to you by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at American University. We don't just want to be funny. We want to show you that math is beautiful and useful too.

The Big Bang for this project was when we hired Susan Solarz. She coordinated everything. I particularly love the masthead design for the D.O. that she came up with. I want to dispel the rumors that Susan was fired after a bitter dispute with the web designers. In fact, it was a simple salary disagreement with the upper management of the D.O. Susan thought she was worth more than we could offer and now she is working in Idaho as the Director of Science Education for the Wilderness Society.

Sue Yi and Alex Ivanov have been our dedicated web programmers for this project and Thomas Meal, the College of Arts and Sciences web guru, put the master strokes on the overall design. Anne Bentzel has been our marketing consultant and liaison with CAS. I want to thank all these people for putting up with me and helping to make this site so great.

What's that you say? It's not so great? So send us your criticisms, your story ideas, and your own lame attempts at humor. Contributions are gratefully accepted!

—Jeff Hakim, Editor-in-Chief