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2021 Iowa Section Mathematics Meeting
Virtual via Zoom
October 8-9, 2021

Call for papers Elections Schedule and Abstracts Preregistering

Only Section NExT activities will take place on Friday from 1:30pm to 5pm CDT. All other meeting activities (student and faculty papers, invited talks, business meeting) will take place on Saturday.

The Saturday schedule has been sent by email to everyone registered as of 10:30am CDT on Thursday, 7 October 2021. The email was sent by Melissa Lindsey with subect line &lq;Fall 2021 IA-MAA Meeting Schedule (with zoom links and abstracts)&rq;. Please check your spam if you were registered and can't find the email. If you still can't find it (or register after 10:30am CDT on Thursday), email Melissa Lindsey.

The fall meeting of the Iowa Section of the Mathematical Association of America will feature MAA Secretary James Sellers from the University of Minnesota-Duluth and MAA AWM speaker Catherine Hsu from Swarthmore College. They will give invited talks on Saturday. Dr Sellers will speak in the morning after the welcome, which will start at 8:15am CDT. Dr Hsu will speak in the afternoon after concurrent sessions from 2:30pm to 3:30pm CDT to close out the meeting. The business meeting will take place from 9:30am to 10:30am CDT, and there will be a lunch break from 11:40am to 12:40pm CDT. Dr Angela Kohlhaas will give her Section Teaching Award plenary address from 12:40pm to 1:10pm CDT.

James Sellers talk, Saturday 8:30–9:30am CDT: Revisiting What Euler and the Bernoullis Knew About Convergent Infinite Series

All too often in first-year calculus classes, conversations about infinite series stop with discussions about convergence or divergence. Such interactions are, unfortunately, not often illuminating or intriguing. Interestingly enough, Jacob and Johann Bernoulli and Leonhard Euler (and their contemporaries in the early 18th century) knew quite a bit about how to find the exact values of numerous families of convergent infinite series. In this talk, I will show two sets of exact results in this vein. The talk will be accessible to anyone interested in mathematics.

Catherine Hsu talk, Saturday 2:30–3-30pm CDT: Projective and Non-Abelian SET

Mathematicians love SET. On the surface, this classic game is a con test of pattern recognition, but it also presents an interesting way to visualize the geometry of a torus over a finite field. In this talk, we will discuss some of the mathematics connected to SET and then explore several new versions of the game, including one arising from projective geometry and one arising from non-abelian groups. In particular, we will see how these non-abelian variations on SET can give intuitive visualizations of abstract group structures.

Contact information for Melissa Lindsey: Melissa Lindsey, Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison 608.263.2727 melissa.lindsey@wisc.edu

Elections

Vice-Chair Elect

We will be holding elections for a new vice-chair elect at the meeting. The candidate for vice-chair elect is Brittney Miller.

Treasurer

We will be holding elections for a new treasurer at the meeting. The candidate for treasurer is Luke Bennett.

Schedule and Abstracts

Here is a link to the schedule: Schedule

Questions

If you have questions, please contact the
Chair, Chris Spicer spicer@morningside.edu (for general issues);
Vice-Chair, Melissa Lindsey melissa.lindsey@wisc.edu (for program issues);
Vice-Chair Elect, Susan Crook susan.crook@loras.edu (for local, on-site issues);
or Secretary, Ross Sweet ross.sweet@simpson.edu (for registration or other issues).

Preregistering

Preregistration is required this year in order to receive the schedule with the Zoom links. Preregistration takes place here. Note that you can use this page whether you are currently in our database or not (see below), but the process will be much easier if you already are.

IA section database

We are trying to maintain an up-to-date database of all section members to provide better communication, save expenses on mailings, and help with the registration and proposal process. If you have not already updated your information, you may do so by using the log in page here. The credentials that you need here are your email and your password. If you forgot your password, you can always have it sent to by using the "I forgot my password" link on the log in page (log in). This assumes that you are in the system. If you are not sure if you are or not, check here. If you are not in the system, use the Contact menu there to send a message to request to be added.