top of page

Marcus Goff

MCIX Founder and Tutor

I am a native of Auburn, Alabama. My father was an academic in the Horticultural Sciences department at the eponymous university. I attended the philosophy department there for my undergraduate studies. Subsequently, I worked as a librarian before relocating to Atlanta, Georgia to become a teacher through the CREST-Ed program at Georgia State. I taught math in Dekalb and Gwinnett County Public Schools until 2020, at which point I returned to graduate school to complete my MPH in biostatistics. My resume can be viewed via the link below, but here are a few highlights:

 

1) I have held teacher certification in mathematics, gifted education, ESOL, and reading in the state of Georgia.

2) I have the following scores (or converted equivalents) on graduate admissions exams:

              GRE: 329, AW: 5.5

              LSAT: 171

              GMAT: 700

              ACT: TBD

              SAT: TBD

3) I have academic distinctions including graduating summa cum laude, graduating as an honors scholar, multiple academic scholarships, admission to Columbia, Wake Forest, Emory, Auburn, Alabama, Georgia State, and UGA, as well as multiple authorial credits.

A numero-phobe until my mid-20s, I developed a love of mathematics following the serendipitous assignment to provide Spanish-language support in a high-school algebra class. The teaching was so superb, I pivoted sharply into math as my profession and have never regretted it. This experience taught me that the difference between loving math and hating it is directly proportional to the skill with which it is taught, and I have dedicated a considerable portion of my life to discerning exactly how to best do this (using myself as the guinea pig!).

IMG_7324.HEIC
About: About Us

What is MCIX?

MCIX ("IX" being the Roman numeral for 9) refers to the 9 interrelated disciplines that inform the field of Meta-Cognition, at least insofar as I understand it. There is no formal field for meta-cognition, though the term finds homes in centers and departments carrying appellations like “Symbolic Systems,” “Artificial Intelligence,” “Cognitive Science,” “Applied Phenomenology,” “Computational Linguistics,” and “Consciousness Studies.” It is, literally, “thinking about thinking” or “the mind reflecting upon the mind.” It is, in essence, about meaning and how we make it, whether meaning is understood as an intellectual dimension (i.e., “understanding” or “comprehension” or “what x means”) or as an affective one (i.e., “to find meaning in life”).

As such, it is a field that is well beyond psychology, though modern psychological sciences are included. The 9 disciplines that comprise this field (or at least where I’ve found it hinted at or reflected in) are:

  1. Mathematics

  2. Statistics and Data Science

  3. Computer Engineering

  4. Linguistics/Rhetoric

  5. Philosophy

  6. Neuroscience

  7. Psychology

  8. Economics

  9. Evolutionary Biology

​

Each of these could be subcategorized ad nauseum to get closer to the particular cognitive-affective dimensions I’m interested in, but maybe some questions might suggest more closely what “meta-cognition” means to me:

  • What is rationality? Why do we vary – both from person to person and from context-to-context (in the same person) – in our deployment of rationality? How can we learn to think more rationally more consistently? (Psychology, Neuroscience, Philosophy)

  • What facilitates mastery, memory, and productivity? How can we enhance those features in ourselves? (Psychology, Cognitive Science)

  • What happens between a moment of non-comprehension and a moment of comprehension? How do I find that, at moment X, I don’t understand something, then at X+10 seconds suddenly do? (Epistemology, Consciousness)

  • Where does an “idea” come from? I say things like, “I had the thought,” or “I have an idea,” but what does that mean? A split second earlier I didn’t have it, and now I do. How? (Epistemology, Consciousness)

  • What is the relationship between learning a variety of problem-solving techniques (irrespective of discipline of origin) and generating creative solutions? (Creativity)

  • What are the similarities and differences between something’s price, value, and utility? How can I find myself assigning value to something in the evening, then assigning it no value in the morning? (Economics, Decision Sciences)

  • By the way: what do I mean when I say, “I find myself doing/thinking/feeling ____”? How did I lose myself in the first place? And then a moment later, I’ll say “I was doing some thinking”: Was I doing it after all? Or did I just realize that my brain had already begun? (Neuroscience)

  • Do all forms of meaning-conveyance carry an element of absurdity, paradox, recursion, or some otherwise self-canceling limit? Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, 1.99999…≠ 2, All Cretan’s are liars, Escher’s stairs, Zeno’s infinite intervals of movement, cultural differences in facial or bodily expressions, and so forth. (Philosophy)

  • Damage to the brain can cause extreme behavioral changes—for example, a fellow became a sex-addicted pedophile after developing a tumor in his brain. What implications does such a thing have for questions of ethics, law, free will, and responsibility?

  • Cues, Primes, and Choice Architecture all predictably change human behavior. If a cat can’t help itself but chase the laser beam, why do we assume humans are different, and what could possibly prove that? (Evolutionary Psychology, Ethics)

  • Tiny changes in the structure or chemistry of the brain (e.g., a minor ischemic stroke, micrograms of LSD) can cause extraordinary changes in perception, including perceptions of “certainty” and “morality” and “insight.” Does this imply that phenomenological features like these are wholly subjective? If so, who’s to say I’m any more “correct” than the deadhead? (Neurology, Epistemology)

  • Some linguists conjecture that language mediates what we can think, and, concomitantly, how we perceive reality itself. If this is true, what does it imply for both knowledge and morality? (Philosophy, Linguistics, Ethics) ((See the film Arrival))

  • What is “Information?” If we can state that DNA contains information, despite the fact that no consciousness compiled it or reads it, can we also say that a tree’s trunk contains a calendar? At what point does an idea become a “byte,” or a stretch of DNA become a “gene?” (Cybernetics, Information Science)

  • Carl Sagan’s book Contact suggests (coyly, one presumes) that god-like extraterrestrials have hidden secrets of the universe in math. Other prominent intellectuals have stated that math is the “language of the universe.” To that extent, what is the isomorphic relationship between math and the universe? Is math more than simply serendipity and pragmatism’s baby? If there is something special about math, how do we know where to look? By definition, infinity pervades mathematical reasoning, meaning an infinity of bases, an infinity of equivalences, and so on. How can we sift through or prove anything about math when we can’t conceive of exhausting its resources? (Mathematics, Philosophy)

About: About

What We Do

As far as what we practically do here at MC9: 

I. Tutoring.

a) I offer tutoring services in K-12 mathematics, including in calculus and statistics, AP, IB, college, or otherwise, at $35-75/hour, depending on the subject level and amount of prep-work required.

b) I offer test prep for the SAT, ACT, and GRE, and hope to soon be offering LSAT and GMAT preparation as well.  The rate for this prep is $100/hour, and may require additional fees for prep-materials (unless you provide your own). The fee difference is based solely on the amount of outside preparation and diagnostic work test prep requires.

c) At present, my availability is limited to the hours of 10 AM to 2 PM, Saturday and Sunday, and from 4 PM to 7 PM, Monday and Tuesday. Please email me if you are interested in finding a time.

d) I do not tutor everyone who contacts me. Successful tutoring requires rapport and shared values/expectations. If I do not elect to tutor you, please don’t take it personally: it indicates that I believe I would be doing you a disservice by accepting the job.

e) Atlanta is a big place filled with a lot of traffic. For that reason, I offer 2 options for meetings. The first is to meet at the Embry Hills branch of the Dekalb County Library System. It is convenient to my home, and I can meet multiple clients in succession. The second is to meet at your home (or preferred location), which carries a travel fee equivalent to additional hours of service. That is, if I require 30 minutes to drive to you, a 1-hour session will be billed as 2 (30 arriving, 60 there, 30 returning). Virtual tutoring is not offered at this time.

f) All payments are required through Venmo, and are due in advance. Your appointment will not be finalized until payment is received.

g) Please download, complete, and email as an attachment the Tutoring Inquiry Form if you’re interested in receiving tutoring services.

II. NewMonics Flash Cards (Coming Soon)

a) NewMonics are flash cards done right. All are color coded, packed with associative hooks, practice exercises, visual aids, absurd rhymes, other good stuff designed to help you remember forever. All include a brief instructional guide as well as an organizer to help keep track of your ideal study routine. Sets (will!) include:

i. Vocabulary – 1500 words for SAT, GRE, and general literacy.

ii. How to be Dead Wrong – 500+ fallacies, biases, heuristics, methods, problem-solving strategies, and more, designed to sharpen your thinking, refine your logic, and avoid mistakes. 

iii. Essential Math Facts

  1. Elementary (arithmetic facts from 1-12)

  2. Middle Grades (primes through 100, perfect squares and cubes, rational numbers, geometric formulas, problem-solving strategies, and essential algebra)

  3. Advanced Math (formulas, equivalences, theorems and more from analytic geometry, trigonometry, calculus, and statistics).

  4. (Con)Test Math (tools, tricks, facts, and more to master advanced uses of exponents and radicals, factorization, rates and ratios, and other common traps encountered in contest and standardized test math)

iv. Essential Greek and Latin Roots (The roots of Greek and Latin words form the basis for a huge swath of our lexicon, particularly in the scientific domains. By mastering them, your explicit and inferential vocabulary will soar.)

v. A Spot of Creativi-Tea: (prompts, questions, strategies and more to facilitate innovation and problem-solving.)

III. College Admissions Consulting

Offered for both undergraduate and graduate applicants, we assist in the process of identifying schools, advising on selection criteria, navigating applications for admission and financial aid, reviewing essays, securing recommendations, and identifying other means of financial and academic assistance. $250 per application. Email me if you’re interested.

IV. General Media (Coming Soon)

a) Our Youtube channel features insightful videos on an array of mathematical, logical, and psychological topics.

b) Our Blog complements our Youtube channel with printouts, worksheets, downloadable content, and more.

c) Our Podcast consists of the majority of our Youtube content, but just (duh) the audio. Many of the pieces we post don’t require the visual accompaniment of the video, and these are available for download on the Podcast app.

d) Our Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook pages are great ways to keep up with our content, connect with the like-minded, and be directed to external resources we love.

V. Premium Media (Coming Soon)

a) Our premium Youtube channel features a variety of otherwise unavailable instructional videos, many focused on specific topics of test prep, as well as Q&A sessions with me!

b) The premium Substack publication features weekly longer, more academic pieces on psychological principles, mathematics education, economics, social issues, and more.

VI. Speaking, Seminars, and Continuing Education

a) Requests may be submitted to <Address coming soon!> to request a speaking engagement or other presentation. Priced by request.

VII. Merch Store (Coming Soon):

here you can purchase a slough of goodies including t-shirts, posters, stickers, mousepads, socks, ties, hoodies, mugs, and more, all featuring our signature MCIX logo. Additionally, our store features e-book and (on-request) paperback copies of my three books: Rules for the Sea, Math in Plain Sight, and The Numerophobe’s Guide to Statistical Thinking. (Note: NewMonics are also available here).

About: About
bottom of page