Allen Butler
Treasurer, Board of Directors
Daniel H. Wagner, Associates

Bayes’ Theorem – Making Rational Decisions in the Face of Uncertainty

A statement of Bayes’ Theorem (aka Bayes’ Rule) can be written very succinctly, but this belies its far-reaching consequences. In this talk, I will provide a little of the history behind Bayes’ Theorem, a derivation of the mathematical basis in probabilistic terms, and a description of the less formal basis where it is viewed as a form of evidential or inferential reasoning. I will illustrate the utility of Bayes’ Theorem by describing applications from the work of my company, Daniel H. Wagner Associates, Inc. One of these resulted in the location and recovery of the “Ship of Gold,” the SS Central America, a side-wheel steamer carrying nearly six hundred passengers returning from the California Gold Rush, which sank in a hurricane two hundred miles off the Carolina coast in September 1857.

Allen Butler's Bio

Dr. Butler holds a B.A. in Mathematics from Texas Tech University and a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Illinois, Urbana – Champaign (1987). He has been employed at Daniel H. Wagner Associates, Inc. (www.wagner.com) since 1987, serving as President and CEO from 2008 to 2021. Throughout his career, Dr. Butler served as the principal investigator for Department of Defense R&D projects involving a variety of mathematical disciplines as applied to areas such as target tracking, multi-sensor data fusion, and search optimization. He has been involved in the development and implementation of optimal search techniques for several projects, including a research effort whose goal was the interdiction of narcotics smugglers in the Caribbean. Dr. Butler is a member of AMS, MAA, SIAM, IEEE, and INFORMS.

Dr. Butler is an INFORMS Fellow, the President of the Practice Section of INFORMS, and serves on the INFORMS Prize Committee for the “Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice.” He also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation and is a visiting lecturer for SIAM. And most importantly, he is the treasurer of the MAA.

Emilie Purvine
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

MAA AWM Speaker

Graphs and Hypergraphs and Topology, Oh My!

Mathematical structures and concepts can be great models of real-world data. For example, differential equations have a long history of success in applied mathematics to model dynamics found in rivers and oceans, the atmosphere, and molecular systems (just to name a few!). Network science is an area of applied math that uses graph structures to model relational systems like social, collaboration, and transportation networks. Graphs, however, are limited to modeling pairwise relationships among entities. Hypergraphs and topological spaces provide alternate models of relational systems that allow for arbitrary sized and structured relationships. In this talk I will introduce the mathematical concepts of graphs, hypergraphs, and topology and show how they are used to model real-world data from a variety of applications including biological systems, chemistry measurements, and cyber networks. We’ll also talk about what measurements and properties of these structures can tell us about the systems they model.

Emilie Purvine's Bio

Dr. Emilie Purvine is a mathematician and data scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. She joined PNNL in 2011 after receiving her PhD in mathematics from Rutgers University with a focus on enumerative combinatorics and nonlinear recurrence relations. While at PNNL Emilie has had the opportunity to contribute to a variety of projects tackling hard problems in applications including computational biology and chemistry, power grid modeling, cyber network analysis, and knowledge models. Her current mathematical research focus is on topological data analysis applied to discrete structures like graphs and hypergraphs. Much of her work involves finding mathematical nuggets in applied domains and working on theoretical advances to enable operational progress.

Emilie also greatly values the ability to make mentoring a focus of her work. She loves to give presentations to students at all levels to provide an example of what a mathematician can do outside of academia. Interns and postgraduates (2-3 year temporary employees including post bachelors, post masters, and postdoc) are always included into her projects to promote on the job learning.

Outside of her core work activities Emilie has also been the chair of the MAA’s Membership Committee and an associate editor of the AMS Notices. In her free time Emilie spends time with her friends and family, enjoys a good book, loves the outdoors and traveling to new destinations.

Derek Buzasi
Florida Gulf Coast University

Whitaker Eminent Scholar

The Mathematics and Music of the Stars

About 60 years ago, solar physicists discovered that the Sun vibrates like a musical instrument, and they began to explore using the frequencies of those vibrations as a tool to better understand the Sun. Since then, we've come to understand that all stars oscillate. Space-based observatories have given us the tools to detect these oscillations, and mathematical analysis of this music of the stars has revolutionized stellar astrophysics. In this talk, I'll give a short history of the study of stellar oscillations, describe the tools we use to translate the measurements we make into physics, and the impact this has all had -- and continues to have -- on astronomy.

Derek Buzasi's Bio

Derek received his undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Chicago, and his PhD in astronomy from Penn State University. He has worked at a variety of institutions, including the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Johns Hopkins University, the California Institute of Technology, and the University of California at Berkeley.

Most recently, he served for ten years as Professor of Physics at the US Air Force Academy. Derek has published more than 120 papers, and has also worked on a variety of major instrument teams, including Detector Scientist for the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, part of the Hubble Space Telescope's most recent upgrade, and Principal Investigator for the Wide-Field Infrared Explorer satellite. He currently serves on the Science Team for NASA's planet-finding Kepler mission. Derek's research interests include almost anything having to do with stars. He began by studying various aspects of stellar (and solar) activity, such as spots, flares, and winds, and has done both observations and theoretical work, including radiative transfer modeling and magnetohydrodynamic models of stellar flux tubes. More recently, he has moved from studying stellar atmospheres and environments to studying stellar interiors and convection through the use of asteroseismology. Derek also works on computer modeling, particularly of nonlinear systems, and is co-author of the chapter on Computational Astrophysics in the CRC Computer Science Handbook.

Derek is also a reserve Navy Engineering Duty Officer with the rank of Commander; his current assignment is with Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawaii. In his free time, he enjoys sailing, swimming, and reading, along with just hanging out with his wife Heather and son Grant. He is excited about becoming part of FGCU and advancing the teaching and learning missions of the institution.