Twitter account created for math teacher Matt Ellis

Anna Parnell, Matt Ellis and Emily Guo pose for a picture on Teacher Twin Day, September 25. Parnell and Guo are responsible for creating the Twitter account for Mr. Ellis. Photo courtesy of Anna Parnell.

By Meriel Salisbury, Staff Writer
October 26, 2018

Math teacher Mr. Ellis is well known across the school for the unique ties that he wears daily. To document this phenomenon, and to record Mr. Ellis’ quirky daily quotes, seniors Emily Guo and Anna Parnell made a Twitter account with the username c_dontcare.

“Mr. Ellis is an amazing human being,” Anna Parnell said. “He wears different ties everyday, and brightens everyone’s days in the most mathematical way possible.”

The idea for his tie tradition began when he was a high school student.

“I had a teacher that I really looked up to in high school and he wore a shirt and tie everyday,” Ellis said. “I thought, if he can do it, so can I.”

Right now, Ellis has 110 ties and said that he began with 20 when he started teaching. His wife buys the majority of his ties from thrift stores, and Ellis buys some of his own as well.

“I have a rule that if I ever go into (a thrift store) and they have a certain funny tie, I have to buy it,” Ellis said.

Ellis is used to students pointing out his ties, but he definitely did not expect the new attention his ties have gotten this year.

“I was in awe that they wanted to do that,” Ellis said, referring to the Twitter account. “I thought it was funny that they wanted to take the time devoted to tracking that.”

The two calculus students first thought of the idea for the account at the end of last semester, and decided to follow through with it at the beginning of this school year.

“We thought that it would be cool to like document all the different ties, and like whenever he like repeated ties,” Emily Guo said. “And, I can’t remember, like on the first day of school or something, he said something that was really funny, and we were like, hey this would be a good quote! So, it’s a quote and a tie.”

The username c_dontcare refers to antiderivatives, which Guo and Parnell learned about in AP Calculus AB their junior year.

“It has to do with integration, and c stands for constant,” Parnell said.

Ellis does not have a favorite tweet so far, and said that for some tweets his quotes were captured perfectly. He plans to continue wearing different ties every day for as long as he can.

Guo and Parnell also want to continue the Twitter account as long as they can, and will hopefully pass it on to the next class of calculus students.

“It’s been so funny to just look back at all the different quotes and things, and also just to let other people see them as well,” Parnell said. “I really hope that we can keep up with it until the end of the year.”

Some example tweets: