UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS SEMINAR

I am currently working as an analyst at Insurance Services Office (ISO) in Jersey City, New Jersey and I finally love my job! I thoroughly enjoy the work I do at ISO and the people I work with are wonderful. After graduation I went straight (48 hours later to be exact!) into graduate school at Union for my MAT (Masters of Arts in Teaching). I did my student teaching in Math at Niskayuna High School and wrote a master's thesis on didactical use of the 'other' in Medieval Spanish Literature. I majored in Math and Spanish during my time as an undergraduate at Union, and this combination allowed me to land a very unique job in the Glen Cove School District on Long Island. While there, I taught 7th Grade Spanish, Bilingual Basic Math to ESL students from South America and Regents Math Prep at the High School. To say the least it was a very interesting experience. After a very eventful

year, I decided not to return and to look for other opportunities. I am currently studying to be an actuary and am also considering becoming certified as an underwriter. I passed my first actuarial exam this November and am preparing for my second exam in May. My job consists of a great deal of problem solving and data investigation. The work requires performing statistical analyses on insurance data with complicated computer modeling tools. I publish documents to assist insurance companies in rate making and state insurance filings. While at Union, I also spent a lot of time in the darkroom. I hope you enjoy some of my latest developments (see next page!). Feel free to contact me regarding teaching, actuarial science, ISO, Jersey City, photography or anything else!

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Department of Mathematics January 25, 2008

The next meeting of the seminar will be this coming Monday, January 28th, with refreshments beginning at 4:00 in the Math Common Room, Bailey 204, and the lecture following at 4:15 in Bailey 207. In this seminar, our own Professor Paul Friedman will be presenting the following talk: The next and final meeting of the term of the seminar will be this coming Thursday, November 8, with refreshments beginning at 3:45 in the Math Common Room, Bailey 204, and the lecture following at 4:00 in Bailey 201. In this week’s seminar, Union’s own Professor William Zwicker will present the following talk:

ABSTRACT: Identification numbers are ubiquitous in today’s world. Examples that you are likely to encounter regularly include credit card numbers, International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs), product bar codes or Universal Product Codes (UPCs), bank account numbers, Social Security Numbers (SSNs), US Postal Money Order numbers, UPS tracking numbers, etc. Further, these numbers get transmitted from one party to another in many possible ways: hand-to-keyboard, scanner-to-computer, mouth-to-ear. Every time there is a transmission from sender to receiver, there is the possibility that an error is being made. Perhaps a single digit was altered, or perhaps two adjacent digits were interchanged. (Remember the campfire game of “Telephone”?) Given this, most identification numbers (but not SSNs!) include an extra digit – a so-called check digit – to help detect if an identification number has been transmitted incorrectly. In this talk, we will discuss various check digit schemes that are used to detect transmission errors – and the varying degree to which these schemes are successful in catching the most common types of errors.

TITLE: Identification Numbers and Check Digits

Where Are They Now? By Mary Annese ‘05

• Willamette Valley REU in Oregon, June 16th – August 8th: graph theory, probability theory, wavelet analysis, & statistical approaches to the game of Go. (Former Union College professor Peter Otto is currently at Willamette University.) Application deadline February 22nd, 2008.

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Problem of the Newsletter: January 25, 2008 Congratulations to Benoit Charbonneau, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Duke University and a friend of the Union College Math Department for submitting two correct solutions to last week’s problem – one using a computer program, Maple, and the other using pure mathematics. You can view last week’s question with Professor Charbonneau’s winning solution on the first floor bulletin board in Bailey Hall. Here is this week’s problem: Find all lines that are simultaneously tangent to the graph of

!

y = x2

+1 and

!

y = "x2"1. (Next week’s problem will follow-up this problem with a generalization.)

Professor Friedman will accept solutions to this problem until 12:00 noon Thursday, January 31st. Email your solution to him (friedmap@union.edu) or put it in his mailbox in the Math Department’s office on the second floor of Bailey Hall.

Photographs courtesy of Mary Annese ‘05

• George Washington University Summer Program for Women in Mathematics, June 28th – August 2nd. For women completing their junior year and contemplating graduate work in the mathematical sciences. Two Union students attend this program in 2005. Application deadline: February 29th, 2008.

Some REUs this Summer: http://www.ams.org/employment/reu.html