EPaDel Spring 2017 Section Meeting

The spring 2017 meeting of the EPaDel section of the MAA was held April 1, 2017 at Kutztown University.

Invited Speakers

• Dominic Klyve (Central Washington University)
  Mathematical Fights! The seedy underbelly of mathematical history
  • Although students are often led to believe that mathematics is a purely rational, unemotional, and orderly field of study, history shows that this is often not the case. This talk will discuss some of the greatest fights in the history of mathematics. We will hear stories of friendships destroyed and national rivalries heightened because of disagreements about underlying mathematics. We will consider what these fights teach us about the nature of mathematics, and we will learn some interesting math on the way.
  • Dominic Klyve (KLEE-vee) is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Central Washington University. He is the author of more than 35 papers in number theory, the history of mathematics and science, and applied statistics – several of which have been co-authored with his students. An expert in eighteenth century science, he has written on the mathematics, astronomy, biology, linguistics, and philosophy of the period. He has spoken on the history of math and science across the country and around the world. In 2014 the MAA selected Dominic Klyve with the Alder Award, a national teaching award for young faculty who have a demonstrated impact within and beyond the classroom.
• Robert Ghrist (University of Pennsylvania)
  Teaching Calculus in the Internet Age
  • What will calculus instruction look like in the (near) future, when it becomes easy to learn what you need on-demand on-line? This talk will speculate on what challenges exist and what opportunities are at hand to improve what we teach and how.
  • Robert Ghrist (Ph.D., Cornell, Applied Mathematics, 1995) is the Andrea Mitchell PIK Professor of Mathematics and Electrical & Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a recognized leader in the field of Applied Algebraic Topology, with publications detailing topological methods for sensor networks, robotics, signal processing, tracking, network discovery, and more. He is the author of a leading textbook on the subject (Elementary Applied Topology, 2014). His prior work in leading the DARPA DSO SToMP project and participating in several DoD MURIs is complemented by NSF CAREER, NSF PECASE, SciAm50, and Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellow awards. Ghrist is also a dedicated expositor and communicator of Mathematics, with teaching awards that include the MAA James Crawford Prize, Penn's Lindback Award, and the S. Reid Warren award in Engineering at Penn. Ghrist is the author and animator of a popular MOOC on Calculus at Coursera, featured in the New York Times, BoingBoing, and Gizmodo.
• Ben Galluzzo (Shippensburg University)
  Fact Checking with Modeling
  • Numbers regularly serve to bring attention to, and in some cases justify, provocative opinions. Less common is a discussion of the methods used to calculate the numbers, or even the questions under consideration. In this talk we’ll discuss some notable numbers and use them as a basis for exploring how the math modeling process provides access to meaningful real world problem solving.

Workshops

• Teaching Mathematics with Primary Historical Sources
  Led by Dominic Klyve (Central Washington University) and Nick Scoville (Ursinus College)
  • This minicourse will introduce participants to curricular modules known as Primary Source Projects, which are based entirely on primary historical source material. Designed to capture the spark of discovery and motivate subsequent lines of inquiry, each module is built around primary source material close to or representing the discovery of a key concept. Through guided reading and activities, students use these primary sources to explore and learn standard topics in university mathematics. During this workshop, the presenter will share some of the research-based findings concerning the benefits of using primary sources in the classroom, and will outline the work in progress being done by him and his colleagues in their National Science Foundation-funded work. After seeing a Primary Source Project and discussing its classroom implementation, participants will have the opportunity to work in groups on some of these Projects. The workshop format will allow participants to engage in detailed study of the historical modules, discuss practical problems of classroom implementation, and explain opportunities to be part of their grant effort.
• Writing a Successful Grant Proposal (or Give Me the Money)
  Led by Eugene Fiorini (Truman Koehler Professor of Mathematics at Muhlenberg College)
  Sponsored by Section NExT and open to all
  • Grant writing varies across disciplines as well as across different interests within a discipline. For example, REU proposals are very different from RUI proposals, even though both focus on the development of undergraduate research. The intent of a proposal rests on very different assumptions based on the target interest. This workshop will discuss writing and revising grant proposals for interests within the mathematical sciences disciplines.

Faculty Contributed Paper Session

Faculty talk schedule (PDF)

Faculty talk abstracts (PDF)

Student Contributed Paper Session

Student talk schedule (PDF)

Student talk abstracts (PDF)

Student Competition

Participants will compete in two rounds of mathematical contest for fancy prizes, camaraderie, and most of all fun!

• Round 1: Students will group together in groups of three or four and work as a team on a set of intermediate-to-challenging math problems for 30 minutes. Pencil and paper only! As you are working on the problems, you may check with the moderators to see if you are correct or not. As the answers come in, a tally will kept of each team's score.
• Round 2: The teams with the highest scores in the first round advance to a lightning round where they are asked a set of "mental math" questions, ones that you can do (with some hard thinking) in your head. No pencil or paper allowed in this round, and any member from any team can buzz in to give the answer. At the end of the lightning round, exactly one team will be deemed champions and bring home some kingly prizes!

Here are the solutions to the student activity.

Lunch Table Discussions

Lunch Discussion Topics (PDF)

Schedule

Spring 2017 Governor's Report from Lisa Marano.