EPaDel Fall 2025 Section Meeting

Linda McGuire
Muhlenberg College
Mathematics at Play: Representing Mathematics and Mathematicians in Modern Theatrical Productions

The ways in which mathematics and mathematicians are rendered in stage productions have undergone significant changes over time, especially as related to issues of technical accuracy and realistic character representations. This talk will combine scholarly techniques found in mathematics, dramaturgy, feminist theory, and performance studies, to analyze patterns of mathematical representation in evidence in a sampling of works in modern theater. While we will acknowledge well-known plays such as Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia and David Auburn’s Proof, we will focus on lesser-known and more avant-garde works to be discussed include Come and Go by Samuel Beckett, Hypatia by Mac Wellman, the musical Fermat’s Last Tango by Joshua Rosenblum and Joanne Sydney Lesser, the Five Hysterical Girl’s Theorem by Rinne Groff and Silent Sky by Lauren Gunderson. These public renderings of mathematical ideas suggest many perceptions, insights, and misconceptions about mathematics and its practitioners. These explorations suggest many questions. What lessons can we learn from these externally-crafted representations of what we do and who we are? What do these artistic pieces tell us about mathematics as it is understood in the public sphere? How does an analysis of these representations help the mathematical community better tell its own story?

Linda McGuire is the Truman Koehler Professor of Mathematics at Muhlenberg College. She has served as the MAA Congress Representative and Treasurer of the EPaDel section. Linda enjoys teaching courses at every level of the undergraduate mathematics curriculum, as well as first- seminars and courses in women and gender studies. She is a former Director of the Muhlenberg College Center for Teaching and Learning. Threads of her current scholarship involve issues of representation in STEAM, feminist theories informing mathematical practices, and inclusive pedagogy. She currently chairs the MAA Committee on Section Needs and Concerns and is a member of the project management committee for the AWM’s Notable Women in Mathematics playing cards project.

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Nathan Alexander
Howard University
Mathematical Models in the Sociological Imagination

This talk examines mathematical modeling through the lens of philosophy and sociology, highlighting how abstract models can support a more thorough understanding of concrete social dynamics using intuitive thinking and formality. The talk will emphasize how mathematics can be a tool not only for analysis but also for developing critical democratic engagement, mutual aid, and collective social action within a mathematical context. Participants will be invited to reflect on both the possibilities and limits of mathematical models in shaping our collective sociological imaginations for the future.

Nathan Alexander, PhD, is an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction in the Howard University School of Education and the Center for Applied Data Science and Analytics (CADSA). His research focuses on the history and development of quantitative and mathematical literacy, and he examines the role of context in probability theory, statistical data analysis, and mathematical education. He is the founder and faculty director of the Quantitative Histories Workshop, a computational curriculum collective and community-centered teaching and learning lab. His research has appeared in Notices, PRIMUS, and the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics.

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Grant Fickes
AtomBeam Technologies
An ENCORE for Cryptographic Compression

Given prior knowledge about the distribution of symbols in some data stream, Huffman coding provides efficient compression to a size close to the Shannon entropy limit for lossless data compaction. In the rare case the distribution of symbols is dyadic, meaning each is representable as a fraction whose numerator is one and whose denominator is a power of two, the distribution of compressed bits is indistinguishable from noise, i.e., bits zero and one are equally likely. In this talk, we spend more time introducing these foundational ideas and explore the ENCORE algorithm, which seeks to extend the cryptographic properties of Huffman codes to those on non-dyadic distributions.

Grant Fickes is a senior research analyst at Atombeam Technologies, a company focused on real-time lossless data compression. He earned his Ph.D. in 2023 from the University of South Carolina, where he studied under Dr. Joshua Cooper, following his undergraduate work at Kutztown University under the mentorship of Dr. Wing Hong Tony Wong. While his academic background is rooted in discrete mathematics and graph theory, his role at Atombeam spans a broad range of topics, including probability and coding theory. A skilled programmer, Grant enjoys the dynamic nature of his work, which blends theorem proving with algorithm design. Outside of his professional interests, he spends his time exploring music, sports, hiking, and gardening.

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