The Origin of Dr. Tremendous

It was an accident.

My last name is Treme, and for years, students would start an email with "Dr. Treme," and autocorrect would helpfully finish it: "Dr. Tremendous."

It happened often enough that it stopped being a typo and became a running joke. Eventually, it became a name I just answered to.

I had always wanted to make supply and demand diagrams that students could move themselves. They could shift the curves, change their shapes, and see what happened to price and quantity. Instead, I taught with static diagrams. When students studied at home, that was all they had too.

For most of my career, ideas like that stayed ideas. Building a teaching tool required a team, a budget, and technical skills I did not have.

Then AI progressed to the point where I could describe what I wanted and actually build it. That unlocked everything for me. Ideas I had carried around for years were suddenly possible.

Each tool is guided by how I think economics should be taught.

So I started making the things I wished I had. Most of these tools began with a specific problem in one of my courses.

• A grocery store where students discover why a fertilizer shock reaches butter but barely touches bread.
• A supply-and-demand market you can hear, where a shortage climbs and a surplus sags.
• A degree planner that holds four years of advising logic, so students can walk in ready to talk about where they are going instead of which box to check next.

I do this in my spare time. An idea might come from something I'm reading, a video I see, or something someone else has built. Then I start wondering how I could use it to teach something.

Building these tools has made teaching more fun for me. I get to put more of my personality into each one, watch how students use it, and keep making changes until it works the way they need it to.

Dr. Tremendous is simply the name that stuck.