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FOCUS February 2003

FOCUS is published by theMathematical Association of America inJanuary, February, March, April, May/June,August/September, October, November, andDecember.

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Copyright © 2003 by the MathematicalAssociation of America (Incorporated).Educational institutions may reproducearticles for their own use, but not for sale,provided that the following citation is used:“Reprinted with permission of FOCUS, thenewsletter of the Mathematical Associationof America (Incorporated).”

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ISSN: 0731-2040; Printed in the United Statesof America.

FOCUSFebruary 2003

Volume 23, Number 2

3 Major Donation Announced for New MAA Conference CenterBy G. L. Alexanderson

6 So You Think You Want to be in Pictures…By Dan Rockmore

8 The Kentucky Section Goes High-Tech: The tale of an e-newsletterBy Alex McAllister

10 Biology and MathematicsBy Victor Katz

14 Statistical Based Evidence that Web-Based Homework HelpsBy L. Hirsch and C. Weibel

15 Short Takes

16 Contributed Paper Sessions for MathFest 2003

20 MAA Awards Announced at Baltimore Joint Meetings

21 Announcing MAA’s PMET Program

22 Employment Opportunities

23 MAA Section Meeting Schedule 2003

FOCUS Deadlines

August/September October NovemberEditorial Copy July 8 September 16Display Ads July 10 August 20 September 24Employment Ads June 11 August 13 September 10

On the cover: Virginia and Paul Halmos, Los Gatos, California, 2002.Photograph courtesy of Leonard Klosinski.

Inside

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The MAA recently received agift of $3 million from Paul andVirginia Halmos to establish aMathematical Sciences Confer-ence Center in Washington, DC.The Association plans to restoreto its former charm the exteriorof its historic carriage house, oneof the three buildings in the MAAcomplex in the Dupont Circledistrict, and to renovate com-pletely the interior to accommo-date conferences of up to 60people, with ample additionalspace for mathematicians to meetin smaller groups or to work in-dividually. Up to now math-ematical meetings at the MAAare confined to two small confer-ence rooms in the Vaughn Building or, iftoo large, they are held in facilities inWashington hotels.

The gift will fund the renovation andconstruction of the space, along with fur-nishing and equipping the interior toprovide a completely modern meetingfacility. Beyond capital expenditures, thegift will provide funds that will supportthe programs in the Center, which thedonors envision as an ongoing series ofmathematically intensive workshops,symposia and seminars. Programs willreflect the range of ideas and topics forwhich the MAA has been long knownthrough its many fine publications aswell as programs at sectional and na-tional meetings.

Paul Halmos has a long association withthe MAA and a lifetime commitment tomathematical exposition. He was editorof the American Mathematical Monthlyfrom 1982 to 1986, and in 2000 he wasawarded the MAA’s Gung-Hu Award forDistinguished Service to Mathematics.The Association was founded in 1915 toprovide a home for the Monthly and,through its many other publications,starting with the Carus Monographs in1925, it has been an active proponent ofgood mathematical exposition ever since.It is not surprising then that ProfessorHalmos and his wife, Virginia, should

choose to enhance even further the abil-ity of the MAA to carry on this traditionof producing fine exposition by creating

this meeting facility. In his“Automathography,” I Want To Be aMathematician (Springer, 1985), page390, Halmos explained the differencebetween a survey [of research results]and an expository paper—something forthe reader who is not an expert but iscurious about the subject, pointing outthat the latter kind of paper is hard to

write. But Paul Halmos hasrepeatedly written memo-rable and elegant expositorypapers, with a style that iseasily recognizable as hisown. In the same work, page403, he wrote “I was, in Ithink decreasing order ofquality, a writer, an editor, ateacher, and a researchmathematician.”

He has left his mark on writ-ten mathematics in twocommonly observed ways:he introduced “iff” as an ab-breviation for “if and only if”and denoted the end of aproof with what is some-

times known as a tombstone and nowoften called a “halmos.”

Virginia Halmos, an alumna of VassarCollege, pursued graduate work in phi-losophy at Brown. She and Paul marriedin 1945 and since then she has been asupporter and partner to Paul through-out his wide-ranging career. LarryWallen, a longtime friend and mathema-tician at the University of Hawaii, in hiscontribution to the volume Paul Halmos:Celebrating 50 Years of Mathematics(Springer, 1991), wrote of her: “Late thatsummer [1955] I met Virginia (Ginger)Halmos, a striking woman I recall think-ing. Any picture of Paul that omits Gin-ger is grossly incomplete. In the firstplace, she’s crucial to keeping the entropyof the Halmos household improbablysmall and in keeping Paul and the catshale and hearty. This, of course, doesn’tdefine Ginger. She’s a woman of remark-able intelligence with a fine wit that noteverybody is privy to. She’s the ecologi-cal Halmos who fishes floundering liz-ards from the pool and worries aboutwetlands.” As interested as she is in be-ing a good citizen of her community withher volunteer work, in quietly support-ing animal welfare programs, and in fol-lowing her strong interest in literature(even in Latin), she has nevertheless livedmost of her life around mathematiciansand has an extensive knowledge of math-

Major Donation Announced for New MAA Conference Center

By G. L. Alexanderson

“I am proud to be a teacher—Teaching is an ephemeral sub-ject. It is like playing the violin. The piece is over, and it’s gone.The student is taught, and the teaching is gone.”

One student’s remarked of Halmos’ lec-tures: “…He often asked us to be‘mindreaders,’ and tell us what he wasthinking.”

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ematical culture. With happy memoriesof visits to Oberwolfach, Ginger hasbeen an enthusiastic force behind theestablishment of the MAA ConferenceCenter since conversations on possibili-ties began. Paul Halmos’ own fond remi-niscences of Oberwolfach appear in his’“Automathography,” pp. 384-87.

Professor Wallen mentioned cats. Toknow Paul and Ginger Halmos well onehas to know that they are both avid ani-mal lovers. They have in recent years hadcats but they love dogs equally well. DonAlbers, in one of his interviews withPaul, noted that during the interviewPaul had, sitting on his lap, Pizzicato (asuitable name for a cat owned by some-one interested in words and music).When asked whether anything aboutcats especially appealed to him, Paul re-plied: “Do animals have souls? Peopledebate the subject, and I stand firmly onthe affirmative. But what is it that ap-peals? Well, they look nice, they’re in-teresting, they’re loving, they’re lovable,and somehow one is in touch with an-other soul. They enlarge one’s life a littlebit.”

For his expository writing Paul Halmoshas received from the MAA theChauvenet Prize (1948), two Lester R.Ford Awards (1971, 1972), and theGeorge Pólya Award (1983), and, fromthe American Mathematical Society, theLeroy P. Steele Prize for MathematicalExposition (1983).

Highly respected as a teacher, and an ad-vocate for a modified Moore method, hewon both the sectional award and theMAA’s national Deborah and FranklinTepper Haimo Award for DistinguishedCollege or University Teaching of Math-ematics in 1993 and 1994, respectively.In support of these teaching awards, oneformer student wrote, “He stresses aboveall the need for clear oral and writtencommunication of ideas as a prerequi-site to good mathematics. Several times,[as I was] struggling over an explanation,he would cut me off and demand that Isay exactly what I meant… [He asks]questions to draw out the answers. Thistechnique thoroughly involves studentsin class, giving them a personal stake in

the process of discovery. Of all the thingsI saw in Dr. Halmos’ class I never sawsomeone yawn and look at the clock.”Another wrote: “That quarter the onlyclass I looked forward to was PaulHalmos’. Our classroom discussionswere always animated, interesting, andeven sometimes humorous… He oftenasked us to be ‘mindreaders,’ and tell himwhat he was thinking. If we didn’t knowthe answer to a question that he expectedwe should have known, he would swinghis arm in a motion that we came to un-derstand as our decapitation. Some of thefunnier moments in class came when werealized that we could sometimes avoidthis motion by giving a silly answer, caus-ing Dr. Halmos to laugh.” One formerstudent wrote him to tell him how muchhe had enjoyed his classes, and closedwith “you are an inspiration and youshould demand that Santa Clara Univer-sity throw parades in your honor everymonth or so!”

Paul Halmos received his B.S., M.S., andPh.D. at the University of Illinois, writ-ing his dissertation under the directionof J. L. Doob. After a period at the Insti-tute for Advanced Study (IAS),Princeton, where he was assistant to Johnvon Neumann (1940-42), he returned

briefly to Illinois. Since then he hasheld faculty positions at the followinguniversities: Illinois, Syracuse, Chi-cago, Michigan (Ann Arbor), Hawaii,California (Santa Barbara), Indiana,and Santa Clara, where he became pro-fessor emeritus in 1995. He and hiswife now live in Los Gatos, California.

Along the way Professor Halmos hasheld visiting appointments at Harvard,Tulane, Montevideo, Miami (Florida),California (Berkeley), Washington (Se-attle), Edinburgh, Chiao Tung (Tai-wan), and Western Australia, as well asseveral visits to the IAS. He has writ-ten over 100 research papers and manyreviews in his principal research fieldsof operator theory, algebraic logic, andergodic theory, with additional workin topological groups, probability, sta-tistics, and Boolean algebras. Two vol-umes of his work appear as Selecta,published by Springer-Verlag.

Honors have included a GuggenheimFellowship, membership in the RoyalSociety of Edinburgh and the Hungar-ian Academy of Sciences, and honorarydoctorates from St. Andrews, DePauw,Waterloo, and Kalamazoo.

Widely known as an editor, in additionto his years of editing the Monthly, PaulHalmos has held similar positions withMathematical Reviews, the Proceedings ofthe American Mathematical Society, theJournal für die Reine und AngewandteMathematik (Crelle’s Journal), Math-ematical Spectrum, the Indiana Journalof Mathematics, as well as the Ergebnißeder Mathematik, the Undergraduate Textsseries, the Graduate Texts series and theProblem Books series for Springer-Verlag.

More than one generation of mathema-ticians has benefited from his famousand groundbreaking text, Finite-Dimen-sional Vector Spaces (1942, 1958, 1974).Others are devoted to his Measure Theory(1950, 1974), Naive Set Theory (1960,1974), and the Hilbert Space ProblemBook (1967, 1974, 1982). Four of his six-teen books are currently available fromthe MAA: I Want To Be a Mathematician/An Automathography (1985, 1988), Prob-lems for Mathematicians Young and Old

Paul Halmos with Pizzicato.

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February 2003

(1991), the Linear Algebra Problem Book(1995), and Logic as Algebra (with StevenGivant) (1998). Another popular bookof his is I Have a Photographic Memory(1987). He has also written on how towrite mathematics and how to give amathematical talk in “How to writemathematics,” L’EnseignementMathématique 16 (1970), 123-52; “Howto talk mathematics,” Notices Amer.Math. Soc. 21 (1974), 155-58; and “Whatto publish,” Amer. Math. Monthly 82(1975), 14-47, in addition to parts of his“Automathography.”

Paul Halmos has always made a case forthe equal importance of proof and con-ceptual understanding in mathematics,so he emphasizes ideas in addition toproofs. This he shares with other greatteachers. His concern for expositorywriting was summed up nicely in his re-sponse to receiving the Steele Prize:“Not long ago I ran across a reference toa publication titled A method of takingvotes on more than two issues. Do youknow, or could you guess, who the au-thor is? What about an article titled Onautomorphisms of compact groups? Whowrote that one? The answer to the firstquestion is C. L. Dodgson, better knownas Lewis Carroll, and the answer to thesecond question is Paul Halmos.

“Lewis Carroll and I have in commonthat we both called ourselves mathema-ticians, that we both strove to do re-search, and that we both took very seri-ously our attempts to enlarge the knownbody of mathematical truths. To earn hisliving Lewis Carroll was a teacher, and,just for fun, because he loved to tell sto-ries, he wrote Alice’s Adventures in Won-derland. To earn my living, I’ve been ateacher for almost fifty years, and, justfor fun, because I love to organize andclarify, I wrote Finite-Dimensional Vec-tor Spaces. And what’s the outcome? Idoubt if as many as a dozen readers ofthese words have ever looked at either Amethod of taking votes… or Onautomorphisms… but Lewis Carroll isimmortal for the Alice stories, and I gotthe Steele Prize for exposition…”

“I enjoy studying, learning, coming tounderstand, and then explaining, but it

doesn’t follow that communicating whatI know is always easy; it can be devilishlyhard. To explain something you must

know not only what to put in, but alsowhat to leave out; you must know whento tell the whole truth and when to getthe right idea across by telling a littlewhite fib. The difficulty in exposition isnot the style, the choice of words—it isthe structure, the organization. Thewords are important, yes, but the ar-rangement of the material, the indicationof the connections of its parts with eachother and with other parts of mathemat-ics, the proper emphasis that showswhat’s easy and what deserves to betreated with caution—these things aremuch more important.”

When I was thinking about how to writethis announcement for FOCUS, I askedVirginia Halmos how she would like tobe described. She told me she is a “house-wife.” While it is true that she has madeher career inside the home, she has dis-tinguished herself by reading widely andparticipating in many community activi-ties. She is truly a partner of Paul’s in herappreciation of the written word. I neverfail to be amazed at the range of thingsshe knows about and her erudition. Ourmost recent e-mail exchange on literarymatters (the week before I started writ-ing this) concerned a piece of verse by

Walter Savage Landor. That led to a ques-tion of a proper translation of the Latininscription on Hadrian’s tomb. And so itgoes. How many people today can rattleoff the nine ranks of angels in medievalangelology? We have all heard aboutseraphim, cherubim, archangels, andangels, but how many of us can comeup with the rest of them, the thrones,dominions, virtues, powers, and prin-cipalities? Virginia Halmos can anddoes, in order of rank.

Paul and Virginia Halmos have devotedtheir lives to the exposition and under-standing of difficult ideas. Paul’s manypublications will live on for years tocome. Now this remarkable couple aremaking it possible for the MAA to con-tinue in the dissemination of math-ematical ideas beyond the existing jour-nals, books, regional and national meet-ings, minicourses, and special sessions,with an ongoing series of programs atthe MAA Conference Center in Wash-ington. Use of the facility will not be

limited to the MAA. Other mathemati-cal organizations will be invited to holdprograms at the Center. Two such orga-nizations have offices in the MAAbuildings—the American MathematicalSociety Washington Office and the head-quarters of the Conference Board of theMathematical Sciences. The MAA is set-ting up an Advisory Board to advise theofficers and MAA Board of Governors onprograms for the new facilities. TheBoard welcomes suggestions from MAAmembers for activities to be held at thenew Center. This is a great opportunityfor the MAA to expand significantly theprograms it offers to members and thelarger community it serves.

Gerald Alexanderson is Michael and Eliza-beth Valeriote Professor of Mathematics atSanta Clara University.

Virginia Halmos at Brown circa 1947.

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It all started with the movie“Good Will Hunting”: In hisbreakout role, Matt Damon playsa wrong-side-of-the-tracks kid,Will Hunting. While working asa janitor at MIT, he happensupon a mathematics problemleft on a blackboard. Unbe-knownst to Will this is an incred-ibly difficult problem, but in aflash of insight (in spite of seem-ingly having no background inmathematics) he solves the prob-lem. He is thus propelled intowhat is portrayed as the high-powered and cutthroat world ofacademic mathematics, andslowly comes to grips with thenew opportunities afforded by the rev-elation of his genius. His best buddy (BenAffleck) spurs him on, and of coursethere is also a beautiful right-side-of-the-tracks Harvard girlfriend (MinnieDriver) to help him along, as well as akindly (albeit damaged) therapist (RobinWilliams) who learns a thing or twoabout life from helping Will workthrough his anger management prob-lems.

Friends kept asking me what Ithought of this “math movie.” I feltthe same as many people did; I likedit. It is a good Hollywood lovestory—but definitely not a movieabout math! But most people did seeit this way: genius mathematicians,often arrogant and surely born to thesubject, puzzling over arcane dia-grams on blackboards, and if not,sent to crack codes for some name-less government agency. Yup, this iswhat, to many, it means to be a math-ematician.

Certainly, there are mathematiciansthat fit this bill, but there are others too—many others. I began to think aboutmaking a film that showed what researchmathematics was, in all of its diversity,both in terms of the people who do it,and the intellects that are attracted to it.I also wanted to give some insight into

what it means to “do” mathematics. Inshort, I wanted to show that mathemat-ics is more than just numbers and math-ematicians are more than just the ex-treme personalities that periodicallymake it to the big, or little, screen.

It took a few years of knocking on doorsat various agencies and foundations, buteventually I found a sponsor at the Na-

tional Science Foundation: Joe Jenkins,a Program Officer in the Analysis Pro-gram, thought that it sounded like a goodidea. So, backed by a budget on the scaleof “The Blair Witch Project”, filmmakersWendy Conquest and Bob Drake and Iset out to show that mathematics is not

so scary. Two years later, the re-sult is”“The Math Life”, a docu-mentary film on the people,problems, and process of math-ematical research. It’s now avail-able for distribution throughFilms in the Humanities and Sci-ences, and will soon be appear-ing on a public television stationnear you.

The making of “The Math Life”was one of the most interestingand enjoyable projects I’ve everundertaken. We crafted a list ofquestions and began interview-ing a spectrum of mathemati-cians (hmm, maybe that’s the

collective noun…). We asked people howthey came to mathematics, what theirearliest mathematical memories are,what sorts of mathematics they work on,what it is like to work on mathematics,how is mathematics like art, and evenasking what they find beautiful aboutmathematics. For many, this last ques-tion proved to be the most difficult toanswer.

After several interviews a narrativeline began to emerge. We decidedthat what we wanted to tell werestories of the possible lives of amathematician, from tentativechildhood beginnings to workingresearcher, and to show that this isa road which is often anything butstraight and narrow. There are na-ive, wonder-inspired beginnings,as well as frustration-laden falsestarts. Stanford’s Persi Diaconistells of being led to mathematicsfrom mysteries of magic and cardshuffling. Princeton’s IngridDaubecheis remembers discover-ing the wonder of π after measur-

ing the diameters and circumferences ofall the platters in the house. Dartmouth’sDorothy Wallace, (recipient of the 2000New Hampshire Professor of the Yearaward), recalls that as a schoolchild, herlack of facility with fractions led someteachers to label her as slow. The road to

So You Think You Want to be in Pictures…

By Dan Rockmore

Wendy Conquest interviews Michael Freedman for TheMath Life.

Jennifer Chayes of Microsoft Research being inter-viewed for The Math Life.

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a career in math can be, and often is, ameandering one. Along the way we dis-cuss some of the things that attractpeople to mathematics.

As Wallace’s story shows, mathematics isdone by all kinds of people with all sortsof different skills and apti-tudes—not just the quiet kidin the back who got all themultiplication problemsright. Those with a talent forpicturing things find theirway to subjects like geometryand topology. A love of num-bers leads others to becomenumber theorists. A fascina-tion with randomness is thefirst step on a road to prob-ability and statistics. A desireto understand the workingsof the world can be the hookto becoming an appliedmathematician.

Indeed, Wallace’s story is butone of several cautionarytales for educators embed-ded in’“The Math Life.”Cornell’s Steven Strogatz recalls almost,“being derailed,” by a classroom experi-ence. Microsoft’s Michael Freedman(winner of the Fields Medal) reminds usthat an aptitude for mathematics is re-flected less in, “getting A’s on all the tests,”than in having a “quirky” mind, able toproduce a different reason to explain whysomething is true. Many of the math-ematicians we interviewed told horrorstories of being browbeaten for not get-ting the right answer in the “right” way.

These are beginnings that as often as notalmost led to ends. In essence it is thesame process writ large, that many (if notall) of us relive during the long slow pro-cess which is mathematical research. AsArlie Petters says, this process is, in itsown way, “a human experience”, onewhich, as Peter Sarnak says, is probablynot for the person who “needs a dailyhigh.” More often than not you are“stuck,” hoping, living for that brief andhard-earned moment of triumph whenyou “get it,” only to quickly return to be-ing stuck once again. It is, for many ofus, as much an artistic process as a tech-

nical one. References to the visual arts arescattered throughout “The Math Life.”

Off this narrative skeleton we hang someof the fruits of mathematical labor:primes and the Riemann Hypothesis,geometry and topology in the guise of

shape and symmetry, the paradoxes ofprobability, and of course a brief look atsome math in the real world, in this casea brief interlude on synchronization oflarge systems, illuminated by the com-monality in flashing fireflies, cricket cho-ruses, beating hearts, and clapping audi-ences. Each of these examples is illus-trated with computer graphics anima-tions.

“The Math Life” is but fifty-two minuteslong, and in that short space of time wehope we have shown the general publicthat the inside of the head of a mathema-tician is not such a scary place —a goodsense of humor is just as important asthe ability to focus the intellect. Math-ematicians are more than just the car-toon mix of genius and arrogance thatwe usually see on the big screen. We alsothink we have given the public a sense ofwhat mathematics is. Those fifty-twominutes were distilled from almost thirtyhours of interviews, and I came to seethe truth in the adage that “ninety-ninepercent of what you shoot is left on theediting room floor.” Among these wasone of my favorite little stories, one told

by Jean Taylor. Like many a mathemati-cian, Taylor found her way to mathemat-ics after sampling the sciences. In her caseshe was a graduate student in chemistrybefore being bitten by the math bug.While musing on what drew her awayfrom chemistry she noted that in math-

ematics you experi-ence a daily imme-diacy with the subjectthat is often lost in thelab sciences. She re-called one particularlab experience inwhich in order tostudy collagen shehad to spend count-less hours goingthrough shipments offrozen rat tails andstripping the collagenoff the tails for laterprocessing. “Pretty farfrom grand ideas” shesays, “but in math-ematics… you don’thave this distance be-tween what you’re do-ing and what the big

idea is. It may be the details that you’reworking on, but they’re still mathemat-ics… It’s not frozen rat tails.” I couldn’thave said it any better myself!

Dan Rockmore is Professor of Mathemat-ics and Computer Science at DartmouthCollege, Hanover, New Hampshire, wherehe is also Vice-Chair of Mathematics. Hisresearch interests focus on the mathemat-ics of signal and image processing.

Dan Rockmore can be contacted atrockmore@cs.dartmouth.edu or by visit-ing his webpage at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~rockmore. A re-view of The Math Life can be found onMAA Online at http://www.maa.org/re-views/mathlife.html.

The five regular polyhedra make an appearance in The Math Life.

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At our 2000 Annual Meeting, I waselected the Newsletter Editor for the Ken-tucky Section of the MAA (KYMAA). Atthe same time, the section also voted toeliminate the traditional paper newslet-ter in favor of an electronic newsletter.Talk about a fundamental change in jobdescriptions!

We now have a couple years of e-news-letters under our belt. Bill Fenton, ourChair-Elect, has suggested thatother sections might be interestedin learning of our experiencesbefore the spring business meet-ings. So, here’s a bit of our story.

For several years before this vote,KYMAA had a voluntary elec-tronic newsletter program. Thevice-chair had established a basicwebsite for our section and thenewsletter editor had been sub-mitting web-versions, producedwith Microsoft Word, of the news-letters. Unfortunately, participa-tion was rather minimal and thisparticular blending of paper andelectronic media was somewhatawkward. The vote in Y2K con-tinued the web-based version ofour newsletter, only e-participa-tion became mandatory!

At our website, http://www.maa.org/kentucky/, both members and non-mem-bers can readily access the newsletter aswell as other information about our sec-tion and about mathematics in general.Furthermore, the newsletters are, in somesense, “permanently” available throughelectronic archiving. Ultimately, our de-liberations of “to e or not to e?” have re-sulted in re-focusing our website as theprimary media for communicating witheach other and the wider world.

After the annual meeting, I talked withthe previous webmaster and newslettereditor and we recognized that this tran-sition would be most easily accomplishedby a blending of their respective respon-

sibilities. And so, at least for now, theKYMAA newsletter editor is also theKYMAA webmaster.

Of course, serving as a webmaster re-quires some level of technical skills andresources beyond word processing. Sev-eral years ago, I took an html course anddeveloped sufficient skills with web edi-tors to start creating course web pages.In addition, earlier in 2000, I revamped

my math department’s website and so Ihad some ideas for retooling the KYMAAweb site. I would recommend Web StyleGuide: Basic Design Principles for Creat-ing Websites, by Patrick Lynch and SarahHorton (ISBN: 0300076744) to anyonecreating and maintaining websites.

As for technical resources, my home in-stitution is currently serving as the re-pository for the KYMAA website. Whenmy tenure as newsletter editor is over, Iexpect the files for the website will betransferred to the institution of the nexteditor. Interestingly enough, I learnedthat the MAA has reserved a URL foreach section. Shortly after our annualmeeting, I contacted the national officeand the MAA reset our reserved URL,http://www.maa.org/kentucky/, to “point”

to the local URL, http://web.centre.edu/~mat/kymaa, where the web pages arestored at Centre College. Hopefully, this“permanent” URL and consistent use ofrelative URLs within the KYMAA webpages will support the needed elementof portability.

During the summer of 2000, I spentsome time reworking the website; keep-ing what was strong from the existing site

and mixing in some new ele-ments. I also began the process ofcreating the email distribution listof KYMAA members that is usedto notify members when newslet-ters are posted. The nationalMAA office had a list that I couldstart from. In the end, I woundup visiting all of the math depart-ment websites in our section togather email addresses. Whiledoing this, I realized that our e-newsletter could also provide animportant opportunity to “freelyspread the good news” ofKYMAA activities to the math-ematicians at the universities, col-leges, and community colleges inour section. And so, our e-news-letter not only facilitates commu-nication among KYMAA mem-

bers, but has also become an outreach tononmembers of the MAA who will hope-fully develop an interest in our section’sactivities. In fact, we have noticed agreater number and diversity in partici-pants’ home institutions at our last twoannual meetings.

After gathering articles from officers andcampus liaisons, I created the e-newslet-ter webpage and set up a link on the sec-tion website. After all this prep work, thefirst KYMAA e-newsletter was producedand distributed in September 2000.Members of the section were notifiedboth by email and by physical postcard;as mentioned above, some nonmembersof the MAA were included in our emaildistribution list.

The Kentucky Section Goes High-Tech:

The tale of an e-newsletter

By Alex McAllister

Screen Capture from a recent KYMAA online newsletter.

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This process appears to be successful andwe continue to follow this approach indeveloping and distributing our e-news-letter three times per year. We recognizedthat some members might not have readyaccess to email or the web; therefore, Ialso send a paper copy of the newsletterto the few members who have requestedtraditional mailings.

At the beginning of this process, I won-dered if breaking the established para-digm of a paper newsletter would be suc-cessful. However, the Spring 2000 vote insupport of an e-newsletter was a strongexpression of active members seekingand embracing a change. Follow-up sur-veys of KYMAA members indicate anoverwhelmingly positive response tocontinuing the e-newsletter.

In addition to the added convenience andefficiency of e-communication, the sec-

tion has realized other benefits, includ-ing significant financial savings, from thisconversion to an e-newsletter. Our an-nual newsletter costs dropped from ap-proximately $1000 a couple years ago toapproximately $200 each of the last twoyears. For the environmentally conscious,we have also significantly reduced theamount of paper and other physical re-sources used in creating the newsletter.

Of course, there’s still some grunt work.Each summer, the overall website needsto be evaluated and updated and theemail distribution list needs to be up-dated. In fact, maintaining the email dis-tribution list has really been the mostdifficult aspect of this new system. Manyof our campus liaisons have played a keyrole in this process, but there’s still a bitof web-surfing required each summer.

Reflecting back on the last two years ofe-newsletters, I must say that I have en-joyed developing KYMAA’s website ande-newsletter and acknowledge that manymembers of our section have providedimportant suggestions and support forthis venture. Both the section member-ship and the newsletter editor appear tobe pleased with this approach (I’m evenrunning for a second term as newslettereditor this spring!). I’ve noticed that anumber of other sections have alsostarted using an e-newsletter. I hope ourstory may be of some assistance for oth-ers considering and implementing thiscommunication option.

Alex McAllister (alexmcal@centre.edu) isAssistant Professor of Mathematics at Cen-tre College and Newsletter Editor for theKentucky Section of the MAA.

The director is responsible formanagement of technologicalinformation services of theAssociation. The director must havethe technical expertise to foresee,suggest, and implement appropriatetechnology that can be used to helpachieve MAA goals. Technical dutiesinclude:

• Researching, suggesting andimplementing new technology asneeded to further MAA operationsand mission in an efficient and cost– effective manner

• Overseeing, supporting andmaintaining internal systemsincluding hardware and software

• Managing the technical side of IT/Web projects

• Overseeing maintenance andimprovement of TIMSSAssociation Management software

• Developing and managingdepartment budget

The director will assist MAAdepartments, committees, officers, andother MAA constituencies inimplementing various. This personshould be able to foresee and suggestways that technology could be used toachieve Association goals. The purposeof the Information ServicesDepartment is to respond to the needsof MAA Officers, volunteers, and staff,especially as they relate to enhancingthe value of membership. The directorwill respond to the needs and questionsof several constituencies (ExecutiveDirector, other directors, governingbodies of the Association) relating tothe web site, web services, TIMSSdatabase and other informationservices projects including onlineordering, publishing, and discussionlists. The director reports to theExecutive Director and supervises a

staff of three, including an IT manager,IT assistant, and a webmaster.

The MAA currently has 8 serversrunning on either Windows 2000 orNT. We host our own website using IIS.The Association’s database runs onOracle.

Candidates for this position shouldhave administrative experience and atleast five years of experience in theinformation services area, includingextensive experience with all facets ofnetwork management, security, andonline services. Candidate should havebroad general knowledge of currenttechnologies. Association experiencea plus.

Applicants should send letter, resumes,and salary requirements to JulieKraman (jkraman@maa.org).

The Mathematical Association of America

is seeking a

Director of Information Services

10

FOCUS February 2003

“The next big thing in mathematics?Biology.” So wrote John Ewing, executivedirector of the AMS in the September 20,2002 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Edu-cation. In fact, Mathematics AwarenessMonth in April of 2002 was devoted toMathematics and the Genome. TheMAM web site at http://www.mathforum.org/mam/02/ containsmuch information about the mathemat-ics used in the genome project and inbiology generally. The mathematics in-volved is relatively sophisticated, andsome of it is entirely new.

It is becoming increasingly clear that bi-ology will be providing significant chal-lenges for the mathematical communityover the next few decades. Not only mustnew mathematics be developed to enablebiologists to continue to make rapidprogress, but also mathematicians mustbe prepared to educate a new generationof biological and biomedical researchersin our colleges and universities.

The mathematics necessary for biologytoday is not the mathematics that wastypically required of biology majors inthe past: a year of calculus and perhaps asemester of descriptive statistics. Thesecourses are only a bare minimum today.Although biology as currently practicedneeds the basic concepts of calculus, itrequires far more sophisticated tools aswell. We illustrate this with problemstaken from biological and biomedicalresearch.

It has long been evident that biologistsneed familiarity with differential equa-tions and linear algebra. For example, inpopulation biology, we want to study thegrowth of one or several animal popula-tions. The simple exponential model, ofcourse, only works for a limited time,when there are unlimited resources forthe population. Once resources becomelimited, other models prove more impor-

tant. These include the logistic model,given by the differential equation

which models the situation where thereis a maximum environmental carryingcapacity, as well as the more complicatedmodel given by the equation

which models the situation where apopulation tends to extinction if its sizeis too low. The first equation, of course,has a closed form solution, while the sec-ond, in general, does not. Nevertheless,with appropriate technology, the secondequation can be solved graphically andits salient characteristics analyzed.(Seethe illustration on page 11.) Analogously,the Lotka-Volterra system of equationsmodeling the populations of predatorand prey, which again do not in generalhave a closed form solution, can also beanalyzed graphically for various valuesof the parameters.

Another useful biological populationmodel is one that looks at the age distri-bution of a population. Given that thenumber of individuals P(n, t) at a givenage n at time t is a major factor in deter-mining P(n+k, t+k), it turns out that suc-cessful analysis of the population in-volves the use of certain matrices express-ing this fact. The population density overtime then involves finding powers of thismatrix, a process made simpler by look-ing at eigenvalues. So biology studentswho want to make a mark in this fieldneed to understand the basic concepts oflinear algebra.

Both differential equations and linearalgebra are used in many other areas ofbiology. A study of the activity of lead inthe body requires looking at a system of

differential equations, since one needs toconsider the lead level in the blood, thesoft tissue, and the bones. Since thesesystems have constant coefficients, theyare generally solved by matrix methods.Systems of equations are also used to fol-low the dispersion of drugs throughoutthe body.

In molecular genetics the central processis the passing on of information fromDNA to RNA; the RNA information isthen converted into information en-abling the cell to make enzymes, whichin turn catalyze a specific set of chemicalreactions that determine the biologicalnature of the cell. To study these reac-tions requires the construction and so-lution of differential equations express-ing the rates at which various reactantsare combining and producing new prod-ucts. Some of the typical equations haveclosed form solutions, generally involv-ing exponential functions, while othersdo not. In any case, it is important forthe prospective biologist to understandthe modeling process, that is, how theseequations are formed and what their so-lutions mean, both mathematically andbiologically. This process can be aided,of course, by appropriate software. Fre-quently, however, one needs to studycarefully the dependence of the solutionson the various parameters involved andthis in turn requires a firm understand-ing of the nature of differential equa-tions.

But differential equations are not suffi-cient mathematics for the study of DNA.It turns out that an understanding of theenzymes that perform the reactions nec-essary for the winding, unwinding, re-combination, and transposition of DNArequires an understanding of the topol-ogy of knots. After all, DNA is in the formof a double helix. The knowledge of whatkinds of twisting and untwisting is pos-sible as the DNA performs its tasks in thelife cycle of the cell often comes from re-cent work in knot theory. To infer the

Biology and Mathematics

By Victor J. Katz

11

y

dy

dtr

y

K=

– ,

11 1

y

dy

dtr

y y

K=

θ

– – ,

FOCUS

11

February 2003

process used by an enzyme, one needs tounderstand when a strand of DNA mustbe broken and when it can just be un-twisted.

In addition to the ideas of linear algebra,differential equations, and topology, it isbecoming increasingly clear that a pro-spective biologist must understand dataanalysis. With many experiments pro-ducing millions of data points, it is nec-essary to use computers for data mining,that is, the automated search for patterns.For example, there is an enormousamount of data about the diagnosis andtreatment of cancer patients. In a givensituation, we have symptoms, test results,the physical parameters of the individual,and the outcome of one or more medi-cal interventions. Ideally, one then usesdata mining to determine patterns, in-cluding, for example, a decision tree.Such a tree enables physicians to improvetheir choices of treatment for currentpatients. How does a machine makesense of enormous amounts of data? Themachine must be “taught,” so algorithmsmust be developed for machine learning.This is a very active area of study in com-puter science.

Trees are important in another activearea of biology, phylogenetics, the deter-mination of how an organism has devel-oped from its evolutionary ancestors.The goal here is to develop what is calleda phylogenetic tree, the leaves of whichrepresent extant species. Each internalnode of the tree represents a postulatedspeciation event in which a species di-vides into two populations that followseparate evolutionary paths and becomedistinct species. These trees are todayconstructed by computer programsbased on the comparison of related DNAsequences or protein sequences in thedifferent species. Ideally, similar speciesshould be close together in the tree. Theconstruction of such a tree is then anoptimization problem. That is, one needsto assign numerical values (“lengths”) toeach edge of the tree, where these valuesrepresent an evolutionary distance be-tween adjacent species. One then wantsto minimize the sum of the lengths of allthe edges.

Clearly, a deep knowledge of graphtheory is required as well as a knowledgeof the construction of algorithms en-abling computers to perform the opti-mization in a reasonable time. Not onlyis this phylogenetic reconstruction usedin determining ancestry among species,but it also applies to the recent work inreconstructing human evolution bylooking at the mitochondrial genome.Since human mitchondria are inheritedonly from the mother, researchers wereable to determine the existence of ourcommon ancestor (called Eve) in Africaabout 200,000 years ago. This study hasalso enabled biologists to begin to mapthe migration of human groups through-out history.

The problems discussed in the last twoparagraphs require the use of comput-ers. Before the advent of high-speed com-puting, biology research tended to be re-ductionist in nature. That is, one triedto decompose a biological system into assmall subsystems as possible, and thenstudy each independently. After all, it iseasier to form and test hypotheses on“small” systems. But with the use of com-puters, it is much easier to attempt dis-covery-based rather than hypothesis-driven research. That is, by applyingcomputers to the data of the human ge-nome project, for example, it is mucheasier to discover patterns and see theimportance of interdependencies, links,and communications among varioussubsystems. The new subject ofbioinformatics, the application of com-puter science to biology, which grew upwith the genome project, has made the

systemic view of an organism much moreamenable to study.

One of the new technologies to whichbioinformatics is applied is that ofmicroarrays. A microarray is a chip con-taining a huge amount of data in an or-derly arrangement. Each unit of data is apiece of DNA, with a physical size ofabout 200 microns. The microarray thenprovides a medium for matching DNAsamples based on rules involving thepairings of the bases making up theDNA. For example, the DNA “signature”of a tumor consists of some 15,000 num-bers. Mathematically, one can think ofthis signature as a point in a 15,000-di-mensional space. The idea is then to com-pare tumors by seeing if they are “close”to one another in this space. Algorithmsare necessary to achieve this determina-tion of whether the different tumors are“clustered.” The hope is that “close” tu-mors respond similarly to treatment, sothe use of microarrays will helponcologists make correct diagnoses andchoose the best available treatment.Eventually, once the appropriate algo-rithms are developed, your doctor willhave your personal DNA sequence on thecomputer and will use microarrays todiagnose your disease and figure out thetreatment to which you will respond.

A final example of the use of mathemat-ics in biology involves fractals. Some ofthe most visually striking examples offractal forms are found in physiology.The respiratory, circulatory, and nervoussystems are remarkable instances offractals, branches subdividing and sub-dividing and subdividing again. Al-

12

FOCUS February 2003

though we do not know why these sys-tems develop this way, careful analysisreveals fractal scaling. Among the hy-potheses are that the fractal structuremakes the lungs more fault-tolerant dur-ing growth and enables the circulatorysystem to achieve a homogeneous oxy-gen supply throughout the body. It is alsoknown that healthy heartbeats are cha-otic rather than regular. If one plots heartrates over several time scales, one againsees the fractal patterns of self-similarscaling.

Since there is so much advanced math-ematics that may be required in biologi-cal or biomedicalresearch, the ques-tion becomes howmathematics de-partments shouldreact. There seem tobe two distinct as-pects of the prob-lem. First, weshould come tosome agreement onthe minimummathematical re-quirements for a bi-ology major, par-ticularly for stu-dents who intend togo into research.Second, we need tofigure out how toteach future biolo-gists the advancedmathematics described above, withoutrequiring them to be mathematics ma-jors themselves.

The first problem appears well on its wayto a solution. The MAA Committee onthe Undergraduate Program’s Subcom-mittee for Curriculum Reform Across theFirst Two Years (CRAFTY) held one ofits Curriculum Foundations Conferenceson the Mathematical Curriculum forHealth and Life Sciences Students in May,2000 and shortly thereafter issued a re-port (see the November 2002 issue ofFOCUS or visit http://www.maa.org/fea-tures/currfound.html and the links foundon that page).

Two issues are addressed in that report,a core curriculum for all life sciences stu-

dents and the need for flexibility in thecurriculum of life science disciplines.Agreement was reached that the coreshould include the basic notions of cal-culus, probability, approximation, logicand mathematical thinking, and deduc-tive reasoning, as well as some work withstatistics and computers. Such a courseshould put special emphasis on the useof models, both as a way of organizinginformation about and providing intu-ition into systems that are too complexto understand otherwise. But any studyof modeling should also discuss the limi-tations of the subject. The computershould be used wherever relevant as a

way of solving problems and analyzingmodels.

Interestingly, the Committee on Under-graduate Biology Education to PrepareResearch Scientists for the 21st Century,organized by the National ResearchCouncil, issued a report entitledBIO2010: Transforming UndergraduateEducation for Future Research Biologists(see http://www.nap.edu/books/0309085357.html) that suggested that amore demanding core of mathematicsshould be added to the undergraduatebiology curriculum:

It is essential that biology undergraduatesbecome quantitatively literate, studyingthe mathematical concepts of change,modeling, equilibria and stability, struc-

ture of a system, interactions among com-ponents, data and measurement, visual-ization, and algorithms. Every studentshould acquire the ability to analyze issuesin these contexts in some depth, using ana-lytical methods (e.g., pencil and paper)and appropriate computational tools. Anappropriate course of study would includeaspects of probability, statistics, discretemodels, linear algebra, calculus and dif-ferential equations, modeling and pro-gramming.

Many universities have attempted to de-velop yearlong courses meeting at least asubstantial portion of these require-

ments, and textbookshave also appeared.One of the earliestsuch courses was atthe University of Ten-nessee, Knoxville.The first semester ofthe course deals withstatistics, probability,exponentials andlogarithms, matrixalgebra, and se-quences and differ-ence equations. Thesecond semester con-tinues the materialon difference equa-tions, provides a sur-vey of differentialand integral calculus,including the trigo-nometric functions,

and concludes with some work on dif-ferential equations. And as recom-mended, the course always deals with theidea of modeling biological phenomena.Students are expected to generate hy-potheses and then attempt to verify themusing the mathematical tools being de-veloped.

Solving the second problem is more dif-ficult, since so many different math-ematical ideas are now or may in the fu-ture be necessary for prospective biologi-cal researchers. One university that hasattacked this problem is the Universityof Pennsylvania.

Starting in 1994, Penn designed a Ph.D.program in computational biology andbioinformatics. The program was open

FOCUS

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February 2003

to students with a solid education inmolecular, cellular, organismal, and evo-lutionary biology as well as a strongfoundation in mathematics, statistics,chemistry, and computer science. How-ever, Penn soon found that relatively fewof their prospective students, most ofwhom had a B.S. in biology, appeared tohave a rigorous enough mathematicalbackground for the program. Thus, Penndecided to put together undergraduateconcentrations in computational biol-ogy. Such programs now exist within thebiology department, the computer sci-ence department, and the mathematicsdepartment. In addition, Penn put to-gether a three-semester Master of Bio-technology program with a track inbioinformatics and computational biol-ogy specifically designed for the needs ofthe biotech industry.

The Biological Mathematics concentra-tion in the mathematics department in-cludes year-long courses in advanced cal-culus and abstract algebra (including lin-ear algebra), as well as courses in com-putational methods and statistics, amongothers. It also requires a substantial num-ber of biology and chemistry courses.The Computational and MathematicalBiology concentrations in the biologydepartment include some of those samecourses as electives, but of course requiremore biology courses. Those programsalso require a graduate-level course incomputational biology as well as an in-terdisciplinary research project.

Interestingly, the upper-level mathemat-ics courses required in all of these pro-grams are the same courses taken bymathematics majors in general, so it isup to the instructors (and the students)to connect these courses to biology prob-lems. Other universities may decide tohave special sections of upper-levelcourses specifically designed for biolo-gists.

Most colleges and universities will not beable to match the resources of the Uni-versity of Pennsylvania, but mathemat-ics departments nevertheless need to payattention to the needs of prospective bio-logical researchers. To help in this regard,the MAA, the American Association forthe Advancement of Science, and theAmerican Society for Microbiology are

organizing a special invited conferenceentitled Meeting the Challenges in Emerg-ing Areas Across the Life, Mathematical,and Computer Sciences. This conference,funded by the National Science Founda-tion, will be held February 27– March 1,2003 in Bethesda, Maryland. It will bringtogether approximately seventy-five par-ticipants from the life sciences, math-ematics, statistics, and computer science,as well as representatives from disciplin-ary societies such as the American Sta-tistical Association and the Associationfor Computing Machinery and the fed-eral agencies. The participants will bedivided into seven working groups, eachof which will discuss curriculum, facultydevelopment, and teaching and studentlearning in a specific area of biologicalmathematics. The working groups are onbioinformatics, structural biology, com-putational cell biology, developmentalbiology, physiology, biocomplexity, andphylogenetics.

Meeting the Challenges will have four ple-nary addresses, by Michael Summers(University of Maryland, BaltimoreCounty and Howard Hughes MedicalInstitute), James Cassatt (National Insti-tute of General Medical Sciences in theNational Institutes of Health), JudithRamaley (National Science Foundation),and Lou Gross (Institute for Environ-mental Modeling, University of Tennes-see, Knoxville). The plenary speakers willhelp the participants confront their ma-jor mission, to think through the issuesof how best to educate future biology andbiomedical researchers and then to pro-duce a comprehensive report which willbe widely disseminated to the nation’sstakeholders. Among the expected out-comes of the conference will be compre-hensive listings of student resources, in-cluding recruitment and mentoring pro-grams, faculty retraining possibilities,and curriculum resources. Suggestionswill also be made on overcoming admin-istrative hurdles to the necessary inter-disciplinary cooperation. (The confer-ence website can be found at http://pub.nigms.nih.gov/challenges.)

The MAA has already been heavily in-volved in this process of thinking abouteducation in mathematical biology. Butonce the results of this conference are

disseminated, our membership musttake the lead in implementing the rec-ommendations on their own campuses.Just as it was impossible in the past formathematics departments to ignore theneeds of engineering students, it will beimpossible in the future to ignore theneeds of biology students. And althoughwe cannot predict exactly what theirneeds will be a decade or two from now,we can predict with confidence that bi-ology and medicine will need more andmore mathematics to continue the re-search aimed at fully understanding theprocesses of life.

Victor Katz is Professor of Mathematics atthe University of the District of Columbia.He is the author of an introductory text-book and many other books and papers onthe history of mathematics. He is currentlyvisiting mathematician at the MAA.

Boston University will have its firstRUMBUS on Saturday, March 22,2003. A RUMBUS sounds, of course,like the name of a beautiful geometricfigure, but it is actually the Researchby Undergraduates in MathematicsBoston University Symposium, whichwill feature Student Talks, a PosterFest,Panel Discussions and a KeyNoteSpeaker of world repute. This year’sspeaker is Professor Frank Morgan ofWilliams College (settler of theDouble-Bubble Conjecture, and manythings besides).

The Symposium is meant forundergraduates of the greater BostonArea and New England to cometogether for a day of activities,information on the profession, andrelentless math fun. The symposiumweb page at http://math.bu.edu/people/RUMBUS03 includes a program,instructions for participation andlocal information.

Have a RUMBUS!

Courtesy of the

Boston University

Student Chapter of

the MAA

14

FOCUS February 2003

Since 1996, dozens of mathematics de-partments have introduced an internet-based homework system into their cal-culus curricula. One popular choice isWeBWorK, which was developed withNSF support at the University of Roch-ester. At Rutgers University, we were ableto examine the effect of WeBWorK onstudent performance on the common fi-nal exam in our general calculusclass. (This course excludes en-gineering, physics, chemistry andmathematics majors.) BecauseWeBWorK was implemented inonly two-thirds of all sections, wecould treat the course as a con-trolled experiment, using thenon-WeBWorK sections as thecontrol group. (We later verifiedthat there were no significantsection effects.)

The study used data from the Fall2001 semester of the general cal-culus class at Rutgers. Out of over1300 students in the class, we hadcomplete data (SAT scores, place-ment scores as well as final ex-ams, etc.) for 1175 students. Ofthese, 368 were in the controlgroup and 807 students in thestudy group. Both groups sub-mitted written homework as-signments, but in the studygroup about 11 written problems perweek were replaced by WeBWorK prob-lems. The WeBWorK questions weresimilar for each student, but were indi-vidualized by varying the numerical pa-rameters from student to student.

Overall, the students in the web-basedsections showed a small but statisticallysignificant improvement (of 4%) on thefinal exam. This improvement was alsopresent after adjusting for placementscores, which are a measure of prior skilllevel. As reported by us in the January2001 issue of the FOCUS, placementscores are the most significant predictorof success. The small difference betweengroup means is not surprising, becausethe WeBWorK group contained a sub-

population of students who did not at-tempt many web assignments. This sub-population diluted the gains in finalexam performance attributable toWeBWorK, as the analysis detailed belowshows.

In fact, we found that the effectivenessof WeBWorK depended dramatically

upon how many of the problems wereattempted. The correlation between at-tempts and percentage of problemssolved was a remarkable .944, suggestingthat once students began a problem theypersisted until they had solved it. Ananalysis of variance showed that only 9%of the variability in WeBWorK scorescould be attributed to prior skill level,even among entering students, so thenumber of problems attempted may bean indicator of effort rather than ability.

Among first-year students in WeBWorKsections, most of whom attempted ev-ery problem, there was a two-letter gradedifference on the final (from D to B) be-tween students who did not attemptmany WeBWorK problems and those

who attempted most problems. This wasalso true after adjusting for the effect ofprior knowledge, measured either by ourplacement test or by their Math SAT (alsoa significant predictor).

Surprisingly, the data suggests a qua-dratic relationship between the percent-age of WeBWorK problems attempted

and the final exam score, withthe best-fitting curve beingconcave up. In other words,students who do less than 50%of the WeBWorK get less “mar-ginal” benefit on the final (i.e.,less improvement from doingone more problem) than stu-dents who do over 80% of theWeBWorK.

A second sub-population con-sisted of upper-class studentswho were taking calculus forthe first time. Unlike the first-year students who placed rightinto calculus, these studentstypically took precalculus first.In WeBWorK sections, most ofthese students attempted be-tween 40% and 80% of the as-signed WeBWorK problems.Here there was a three letter-grade difference (from F to B)between those who did most

of the assigned WeBWorK problems andthose who did only a few.

Upper-class students who were repeat-ing Calculus did not seem to derive anybenefit from attempting WeBWorKproblems. We are still in the process ofstudying this group in an effort to un-derstand the reason for the absence ofany correlation between the amount ofWeBWorK activity and final exam scoresin this group.

Lew Hirsch and Chuck Weibel teach atRutgers University.

Statistical Evidence that Web-Based Homework Helps

By L. Hirsch and C. Weibel

Sample WeBWorK problem. The score is 50% because oneanswer is wrong.

FOCUS

15

February 2003

Tenth Annual Hudson RiverUndergraduate MathematicsConference

HRUMC X, the tenth annual HudsonRiver Undergraduate Mathematics Con-ference will be held at Union College,Schenectady, NY on April 12, 2003. Theconference, which is funded by the An-drew W. Mellon Foundation with addi-tional support from Union College, in-cludes presentations on mathematics byboth faculty and students, and both areencouraged to participate. Conferencesessions are designed so that some pre-sentations are accessible to undergradu-ates in their first years of study, and oth-ers are accessible to third- or fourth-yearundergraduate mathematics majors.This year’s conference will focus on in-terdisciplinary talks, though talks in anymathematical area are welcome. You canfind out more about HRUMC by visit-ing the conference web site at http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/mcs/hrumc.htm. Those wishing to make a pre-sentation at the conference should sub-mit an abstract via the web site by Feb-ruary 27th, 2003.

Demands for Teacher Quality SpurNew Initiatives

According to an article in Education Week(December 4, 2002), the new federal rulesrequiring under-qualified teachers toupgrade their credentials by 2006 isspurring new initiatives outside of themore traditional teacher educationprograms. Since traditional schools don’thave an easy way to offer specificprograms to school districts, various for-profit institutions, colleges that alreadyhave in-service teacher-trainingprograms, and textbook publishers arerushing to provide solutions. Schooldistricts have welcomed suchpartnerships because they need to getinto compliance quickly, but someeducators worry that the programs donot offer the same level of preparationas traditional teacher preparationcourses. See http://www.edweek.org/ew/

ewstory.cfm?slug=14train.h22 for moreinformation.

GAO Calls for Monitoring of Teacher-Education Projects

In 1998, Congress created a program thatoffered grants intended to improve thequality of teaching in American schools.The Department of Education set up theTeacher Quality Enhancement GrantOffice to administer the program. OnDecember 11, 2002, the GeneralAccounting Office released a report thatconcludes that the Department ofEducation is not adequately overseeingthe use of these funds. In particular, theGAO argues that DoE needs to set up “aneffective system for communicating withgrantees.” The report also argues that theterms associated with the accountabilityprovisions in the grants are so vague thatit is impossible to determine success, andtherefore recommends that DoE provideclearer definitions and more precisemeasures of success or failure. See http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-6for the full report.

New Faculty: Consider Project NExT

Project NExT (New Experiences inTeaching) is an MAA professionaldevelopment program for new andrecent Ph.D.s in the mathematicalsciences (including pure and appliedmathematics, statistics, operationsresearch, and mathematics education). Itaddresses all aspects of an academiccareer: improving the teaching andlearning of mathematics, engaging inresearch and scholarship, andparticipating in professional activities. Italso provides the participants with anetwork of peers and mentors as theyassume these responsibilities.

Each year, about sixty faculty membersfrom colleges and universities through-out the country are selected to partici-pate in a workshop preceding the MAAsummer meeting, activities during thesummer MAA meetings and the JointMathematics Meetings in January, and anelectronic discussion network. Facultyfor whom the 2003-2004 academic yearwill be the first or second year of full-

Short Takes

By Fernando Q. Gouvêa

time employment with significant teach-ing responsibilities at the college/univer-sity level are invited to apply to becomeProject NexT Fellows. The applicationdeadline is April 11, 2003. For more in-formation, see the Project NExT Website,http://archives.math.utk.edu/projnext/.

Project NExT receives major fundingfrom The ExxonMobil Foundation, withadditional funding from The Dolciani-Halloran Foundation, The AmericanMathematical Society, The EducationalAdvancement Foundation, TheAmerican Statistical Association, TheAssociation of Mathematics TeacherEducators, and the Greater MAA Fund.

Mathematics Project Wins Siemens-Westinghouse Competition

Early in December, the SiemensFoundation announced the nationalwinners of the Siemens WestinghouseCompetition in Mathematics, Science,and Technology. High school studentsfrom across the nation submitted reportson their research to the SiemensWestinghouse judges, then selectedstudents made oral presentations ontheir work. At the end of the process, thetop prize in the individual category wentto Steven J. Byrnes, a senior at RoxburyLatin School in West Roxbury, MA, for amathematics project entitled “Poset-Game Periodicity”, in which he proved asignificant new theorem on poset games.The award includes a $100,000scholarship that Byrnes plans to use tostudy mathematics at Harvard. See http://www.siemens-foundation.org for moreinformation.

Sources

HRUMC: press release, Janine Wittwer,William Zwicker. New teacher edinitiatives: Education Week, December 4,2002. GAO report: Chronicle of HigherEducation Daily News, December 13,2002, highlights section of GAO report,

Project NExT: Joe Gallian. Siemens-Westinghouse competition: AMS, Siemens

Foundation.

16

FOCUS February 2003

The Mathematical Association ofAmerica will hold its annual MathFest,Thursday, July 31 through Saturday, Au-gust 2, 2003 in Boulder, Colorado. Thecomplete meetings program will appearin the April 2003 issue of FOCUS.

This announcement is designed to alertparticipants about the contributed pa-per sessions and their deadlines. Pleasenote that the days scheduled for thesesessions remain tentative.

The organizers listed below, indicatedwith an (*), solicit contributed paperspertinent to their sessions. Sessions gen-erally limit presentations to ten or fif-teen minutes. Each session room con-tains an overhead projector and screen.Persons needing additional equipmentshould contact the organizer of their ses-sion as soon as possible, but prior toTuesday, June 5, 2003.

Contributed Paper Sessions

MAA CPS A1 The Art/Science ofUsing Mathematics in ApplicationsThursday and Friday afternoons

Mathematics is a valuable tool in a di-verse array of disciplines. Many appli-cation problems appeal to the systematicreduction, logic, and structure thatmathematical techniques can offer. Onthe other hand, using mathematics mayalso produce a beautiful insight into anapplication problem. This session seeksto find application problems that illus-trate the beauty and the power of math-ematics. Preference will be given to pre-sentations that easily lend themselves tobe used as classroom modules in an un-dergraduate mathematics class.

Kyle L. Riley(*)Department of Mathematicsand Computer ScienceSouth Dakota School of Minesand Technology501 East Saint Joseph StreetRapid City, SD 57701-3995Phone: (605) 394-2471Fax: (605) 394-6078Email: kyle.riley@sdsmt.edu

MAA CP B1 Innovations in theTeaching of CalculusThursday and Friday afternoons

The last several years have seen manypresentations at various meetings on in-novative methods to teach calculus. Thissession is seeking talks about truly newideas on how to teach all three semestersof calculus. These approaches can in-clude but are not limited to the use ofthe computer or World Wide Web, stu-dent projects, student group work andinnovative presentations of applications.

Howard Penn(*)Mathematics DepartmentU.S. Naval Academy502 Holloway Road

Annapolis, MD 21402-5002Phone: (410) 293-6768Fax: (410) 293-4883Email: hlp@usna.edu

MAA CP C1 Creative Use Of Technol-ogy in Teaching MathematicsThursday and Friday afternoons

This session will focus on innovative usesof technology to support and enhancethe learning of mathematics in all col-lege courses. In particular, we are inter-ested in the use of technology to supportconceptual understanding and apprecia-tion of the application of mathematicalprinciples to solving real world problems.This session is sponsored by the MAACommittee on Computers in Mathemat-ics Education (CCIME).

Mary L. Platt(*)Mathematics DepartmentSalem State College352 Lafayette StreetSalem, MA 01970Phone: (978) 542-6928Fax: (978) 542-7175Email: mplatt@salemstate.edu

Marcelle BessmanJacksonville University

MAA CP D1 Getting Students toExplore Concepts Through Writingin MathematicsThursday afternoon

This session invites papers about assign-ments and projects that require studentsto write about mathematical concepts, toexpress concepts in their own words, tointerpret symbolic mathematics in theirown words, and to write about math-ematics, in general. These assignmentscan include conceptual papers such ashaving the students explain a concept intheir own words as an answer to a ques-tion, in the form of a letter to a friend, apoem, or even a short story. Project re-ports that require students to explain

Call for Papers

Contributed Paper Sessions at MathFest 2003

Submission Procedures forContributed Paper Proposals

Send the name(s) and address(es) of theauthor(s), and a one-page summary ofyour paper directly to the organizerindicated with an (*). In order to enablethe organizer(s) to evaluate theappropriateness of your paper, includeas much detailed information as possiblewithin the one-page limitation.

Proposals should not be sent to morethan one organizer. If your paper cannotbe accommodated in the session it wassubmitted, it will be automaticallyconsidered for the general contributedpaper session. E-mail submissions arepreferred. The e-mail address is:fpford@providence.edu.

Your summary must reach the designatedorganizer by Tuesday, May 6, 2003. Earlysubmissions are encouraged. Theorganizer will acknowledge receipt of allsummaries. If your paper is accepted, theorganizer will provide you with an e-mailtemplate and directions on how tosubmit an abstract for your presentation.

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February 2003

fully all concepts used to someone whoknows little or nothing about the math-ematics used in solving the project prob-lem, assignments that require students toexpress theorems in plain English so thatone of their friends could understand, oreven simple assignments that require stu-dents to explain the meaning and the useof the variables and notations that theyuse.

Each presenter is encouraged to discusshow the use of the assignment/projecthelped students to improve their under-standing of course concepts and how theuse of writing in the course helped stu-dents to understand and to learn math-ematics. Of particular interest is the ef-fect of such projects/assignmentsthroughout the semester on the students’understanding of course concepts andnotations, the ability of students to com-municate mathematics using words andsymbols, and the attitude of students to-ward mathematics.

Sarah L. Mabrouk(*)Mathematics DepartmentFramingham State College100 State Street, PO Box 9101Framingham, MA 01701-9101Phone: (508)626-4785Fax: (508)626-4003Email: smabrouk@frc.mass.edu

MAA CP E1 Advances in RecreationalMathematicsThursday afternoon

There have been many recent advancesin recreational mathematics, some ofwhich have involved the use of comput-ers. This session is designed to give youan opportunity to explain your recentwork in the field. While the organizerencourages submissions that involvecomputers, that is not essential for con-sideration. For the purposes of this ses-sion, the definition of recreational math-ematics will be a broad one. The primaryguideline used to determine suitability ofsubject will be the understandability ofthe mathematics. For example, if themathematics in the paper is commonlyfound in graduate programs, then itwould generally be considered unaccept-able. Supplemental computer programs

can be written in any language, howeverthey must be clean and WELL docu-mented. Any source code used to createthe paper must also be submitted forverification. Papers where existing pro-grams such as Mathematica® were usedwill also be considered.

Charles Ashbacher(*)Charles Ashbacher TechnologiesBox 294Hiawatha, IA 52233Phone (319) 378-4646Fax: (928) 438-7929E-mail: cashbacher@yahoo.com

MAA CP F1 E-Learning ofMathematics CoursesThursday afternoon

This session invites papers that describee-learning mathematics courses. Papersthat deal with methods of design, imple-mentation, delivery assessment andmaintenance of complete e-learning en-vironments, as well as experiences imple-menting such courses are welcomed.

Elias Deeba(*)Dept. of Computer & Math SciencesUniversity of Houston-DowntownOne Main Street, Suite S-705Houston Texas 77002Phone: (713) 221-8550Fax: (713) 221-8086Email: Deebae@dt.uh.edu

Ananda GunawerdenaCarnegie-Mellon University

MAA CP G1 Assessment of StudentLearning in UndergraduateMathematicsFriday afternoon

Papers are invited that describe aninstitution’s program of assessment ofstudent learning in a curricular block ofundergraduate mathematics courses.The session is sponsored by the NSF-sup-ported MAA Project “Supporting Assess-ment in Undergraduate Mathematics”(SAUM). The curricular blocks that havebeen identified as focus areas by SAUMare (1) mathematics major; (2) math-ematics for teachers; (3) general educa-

tion (or quantitative literacy) courses; (4)placement/developmental programs; (5)mathematics for and in mathematics-intensive majors; and (6) innovations(e.g. reform courses). Programs of assess-ment in these six focus areas are espe-cially invited, but programs of assess-ment in other curricular blocks may becontributed. Contributions shouldpresent a clear description of the assess-ment design and results of a currentlyactive and continuing assessment pro-gram. The following outline is suggested:Background and goals: What did wehope to accomplish? Description: Whatdid we do?

• Developing the assessment program

• Details of the assessment program

• Revisions based on initial experience(if applicable)

• Insights: What did we learn?

• Findings and success factors

• Use of the findings

• Next steps and recommendations

SAUM is gathering case studies of assess-ment programs for consideration forpublishing on the website below or in avolume similar to MAA Notes #49, As-sessment Practices in UndergraduateMathematics. Presenters of papers con-tributed to this session will be invited tosubmit a case study for consideration forpublication. More details can be foundat http://www.maa.org/SAUM/index.html.

Bill Marion(*)Department of Mathematicsand Computer ScienceValparaiso UniversityValparaiso, IN 46383Phone: (219) 464-5422Fax: (219) 464-5065E-mail: Bill.Marion@valpo.edu

William HaverVirginia Commonwealth University

Bernard MadisonUniversity of Arkansas

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FOCUS February 2003

MAA CP H1 The Special InterestGroup of the MAA on Research inUndergraduate Mathematics Educa-tion (Research-to-Practice)Friday afternoon

The SIGMAA on RUME invites contri-butions that address research issues con-cerning the teaching and learning of un-dergraduate mathematics. This sessionwill be devoted to expositions of researchresults and uses of research (RUME) inteaching. Priority will be given to pro-posals that include summaries of re-search results together with implicationsfor the classroom, or specific examplesdescribing how research results have in-formed instruction in actual collegeclassrooms. Proposals must clearly de-scribe the research and the classroomaspects of the presentation, as well as therelationship between them.

Anne Brown(*)Department of Mathematical SciencesIndiana University South BendSouth Bend, Indiana 46615Phone: (574) 237-4427Fax: (574) 237-6589Email: abrown@iusb.edu

Marilyn CarlsonArizona State University

Jim CottrillIllinois State University

MAA CP I1 Technology Innovationsin Mathematics Education forElementary and Secondary TeachersFriday and Saturday afternoons

Recently, there has been a great deal ofinterest in designing mathematicscourses and programs for pre-serviceteachers, for professional development ofin-service teachers and for Master of Artsin Teaching (MAT) programs whichemphasize pedagogy but have a math-ematics component. The CBMS docu-ment “The Mathematical Education ofTeachers” and the NCTM standards callfor the integration of technology in theteaching of mathematics. Many statesnow require facility with various aspects

of computer use for teacher certificationand mathematics courses are a naturalplace for much of this learning. However,to many of us it is not obvious what kindsof topics and problems, let alone softwareand even hardware, lend themselves tothe teacher education setting.

This session invites papers that incorpo-rate technology in the design and imple-mentation of innovative courses for pre-service or in-service teachers at any of thepre K-12 levels. Presentations shoulddescribe math education courses thathave been totally re-designed or that in-fuse technology into a traditional cur-riculum. Experiences might include: useof laptops; online or interactive TVcourses; web-based research, com-munication or lessons; discovery learn-ing or investigations in a computer labusing popular computer algebra systems;evidence of how these courses impacteither the teachers’ or their students’learning of mathematical concepts.

Also of interest is discussion of materi-als for MAT programs which attract tech-nologically-sophisticated teachers withgreat variation in mathematical skills.Papers that deal with assessment of suchprograms or implications for accredita-tion or standards at the state or nationallevel are also welcomed. It is our hopethat the session will provide a forum forthose who have had success in this areato educate and inspire those of us whoare casting about for ideas.

Carol Vobach(*)University of Houston Downtown1 North Main StreetHouston, Texas 77002Phone: (713) 221-8968Fax: (713) 221-8086Email: vobachc@uhd.edu

Ron BarnesUniversity of Houston Downtown

Elias DeebaUniversity of Houston Downtown

John HammanAnne Arundel Community College

Kira HammanHood College

MAA CP J1 Innovative Approaches inQuantitative LiteracySaturday afternoon

Discussions about quantitative or math-ematical literacy have become moreand more common over the past fewyears. This session will allow faculty whohave developed successful approaches toshare their work with others. Submis-sions should include a description of thecourse contents, the methods used, andthe audience to whom the material is di-rected. Indication should also be givenas to why the approach has worked. Pre-sentations involving interdisciplinaryand team-taught approaches are encour-aged, as are those for non-traditionalstudents or those with weak mathemati-cal backgrounds.

Richard J. Maher(*)Mathematics and StatisticsLoyola University Chicago6525 N. Sheridan RoadChicago, Illinois 60626Phone: (773) 508-3565Fax: (773) 508-2123Email: rjm@math.luc.edu

MAA CP K1 General ContributedPaper SessionThursday, Friday, and Saturday after-noons

This session is designed for papers thatdo not fit into one of the other sessions.Papers may be presented on any math-ematically related topic. Papers that fitinto one of the other sessions should besent to that organizer, not to this session.

Frank Ford(*)Department of MathematicsProvidence CollegeProvidence, RI 02918Tel:(401) 865-2635Fax: (401 865-1438Email: fpford@providnce.edu

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February 2003

Students who wish to present a paperat MathFest 2003 in Boulder, Coloradomust be nominated by a faculty advi-sor familiar with the work to be pre-sented. To propose a paper for presen-tation, the student must complete aform and obtain the signature of a fac-ulty sponsor.

Nomination forms for the MAA Stu-dent Paper Sessions are located onMAA Online at www.maa.org underSTUDENTS, or can be obtained from

Dr. Thomas Kelley (tkelley@hfcc.net) atHenry Ford Community College (313)845-6492.

Students who make presentations at theMathFest, and who are also members ofMAA Student Chapters, are eligible forpartial travel reimbursement. The dead-line for receipt of applications is June27, 2003.

PME student speakers must be nomi-nated by their chapter advisors. Appli-

Call for Student Papers

cation forms for PME student speakerscan be found on the PME web sitewww.pme-math.org or can be obtainedfrom PME Secretary-Treasurer, Dr. LeoSchneider (leo@jcu.edu). Students whomake presentations at the Annual Meet-ing of PME are eligible for partial travelreimbursement. The deadline for receiptof abstracts is June 27, 2003.

In the mid-1980s, the mathematicscommunity initiated a movement tochange the standard undergraduatecourse in calculus. This change focusedon the need for raising students’ concep-tual understanding, while implementingnew methods to reduce tedious calcula-tions. Efforts were encouraged throughfunding initiatives by the National Sci-ence Foundation (NSF) and others. Themovement helped to develop a vision forcalculus that is challenging and stimu-lating, with the primary goal being toimprove the quality of calculus coursesand the level of learning by students inthese courses at all types of institutions.However, there are a limited number ofstudies that document the impact of suchefforts in calculus.

Funding from NSF is supporting the dis-tribution to every college mathematicsdepartment of Changing Calculus: A re-port on evaluation efforts and national

Free Copies of MAA Notes Volume on Calculus

Reform Available

impact from 1988 to 1998, written by Su-san Ganter (Clemson University) andpublished by MAA in 2001. This publi-cation discusses the results from a studyconducted as a part of a larger effort byNSF to evaluate the impact of reform inSMET education at the undergraduatelevel.

The report includes information frommore than 300 studies and writingsabout calculus reform during this ten-year period. Information for the reportwas collected to investigate what waslearned about the effect of calculus re-form on (1) student achievement andattitudes, (2) faculty and the mathemat-ics community, and (3) the general edu-cational environment.

Check with your mathematics depart-ment chair to see your institution’s freecopy. Questions may be directed to theauthor at sganter@clemson.edu.

The MAA seeks a mathematician tobe Academic Director of the Math-ematical Olympiad Summer ProgramJune 10 - July 7, 2003 in Lincoln, NEand Leader of the US delegation to theInternational Mathematical Olympiadin Tokyo, Japan July 7-19, 2003. Mustbe excellent mathematical problemsolver, have excellent teaching skills andbe able to work with exceptionally tal-ented high schools students, and be ableto represent the USA and the MAA.Please send letter of application andresume by March 1, 2003, to ProfessorSteve Dunbar, MAA American Math-ematics Competitions, 1740 VineStreet, Lincoln, NE. Please send yourinquiries about the position to Pro-fessor Dunbar at 1-402-472-6206 orsdunbar@math.unl.edu.

MAA American

Mathematics

Competitions

Program Seeks

MOSP-IMO Leader

20

FOCUS February 2003

As happens every year, the winners ofseveral important MAA awards were an-nounced at the Joint Mathematics Meet-ings in Baltimore. A list with citationsand responses can be found on MAAOnline at http://www.maa.org/news/awards_jan03.html.

Gung Hu Award for Distinguished Ser-vice to Mathematics

The Yueh-Gin Gung and Dr. Charles Y.Hu Award for Distinguished Service toMathematics is the most prestigiousaward made by the Association. Thisyear’s award went to Clarence F.Stephens, who until his retirement in1987 was Chairman of the Departmentof Mathematics at the State University ofNew York at Potsdam. Stephens had amajor role in achieving the “PotsdamMiracle.” His approach to the under-graduate mathematics major at SUNYPotsdam in the 1980s led to a new modelfor creating a welcoming atmosphere forundergraduate mathematics majors atmany other institutions. This achieve-ment was the main reason for Stephens’award, though of course he had alreadyhad a long and distinguished career inmathematics education before coming toSUNY Potsdam. A profile of Stephenswill appear in the March issue of theAmerican Mathematical Monthly.

Certificates of Meritorious Service

The MAA presents Certificates of Meri-torious Service to members who haveserved the association in notable ways,both at the national and at the sectionlevel. At each January meeting, about sixsuch certificates are awarded. This year’scertificates went to:

Larry J. Morley,Illinois Section (ISMMA)

Karin ChessKentucky Section

Alvin R. TinsleyMissouri Section

Lester H. LangeNorthern California Section

Luise-Charlotte KappeSeaway Section

Fredric TufteWisconsin Section

Full citations and responses are availableonline.

Haimo Awards

As announced in our November issue,the Deborah and Franklin Tepper HaimoAwards for Distinguished College or Uni-versity Teaching of Mathematics went to:

Judith Victor GrabinerPitzer College

Ranjan RoyBeloit College

Paul ZeitzUniversity of San Francisco

All three winners gave talks at the Balti-more meeting. For more information, seethe November issue of FOCUS or go toh t t p : / / w w w . m a a . o r g / n e w s /haimo_award_winners.html.

Chauvenet Prize

The Chauvenet Prize is given for an out-standing expository article on a math-ematical topic by a member of the Asso-ciation. The prize is named for WilliamChauvenet, a professor of mathematicsat the United States Naval Academy. Thisyear’s Chauvenet Prize went to ThomasC. Hales for his article “Cannonballs andHoneycombs,” which appeared in No-tices of AMS, April 2000, vol. 47, no. 4,440-449.

Hales’ article is about two famous prob-lems. The first is the Kepler Conjecture,

which asserts that the natural cannon-ball arrangement gives the maximumdensity packing of the Euclidean 3-di-mensional space with congruent solidballs. The second is the HoneycombConjecture, which says that any partitionof the plane into regions of equal areahas perimeter at least that of the regularhexagonal honeycomb tiling. Hales re-cently proved both conjectures, and thearticle gives both the history of the prob-lems and an expository account of theirsolution. Hales’ article is available onlineat http://www.ams.org/notices/200004/fea-hales.pdf.

Morgan Prize

The Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize forOutstanding Research in Mathematics byan Undergraduate Student recognizes andencourages outstanding mathematicalresearch by undergraduate students. Thisyear’s prize went to Joshua Greene forhis work in combinatorics. His paper “Anew short proof of Kneser’s conjecture”is to appear in the”American Mathemati-cal Monthly. It is related to the work inhis undergraduate senior thesis “Kneser’sconjecture and its generalizations”. Adescription of Greene’s work and his re-sponse to the award can be found online.

Further coverage of the Joint Mathemat-ics Meetings will appear in the March is-sue of FOCUS.

MAA Awards Announced at the Baltimore Joint Meetings

By Fernando Q. Gouvêa

The theme for this year’s mathemat-ics Awareness Week has just been an-nounced. It will be Mathematics andArt. FOCUS will have more detailed in-formation in a future issue; for now,visit http://www.d.umn.edu/~jgallian/art.html for essays, links, references,possible speakers, and the MAM2003poster.

Mathematics

Awareness Week 2003

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February 2003

A growing set of national reports calls for better preparation of the nation’s mathematics teachers by mathematics faculty. Tohelp meet this need, the MAA has proposed a multifaceted program, Preparing Mathematicians to Educate Teachers (PMET).

The PMET program will have three major components:

(1) Faculty Training: summer workshops of varying durations and mini-courses at professional meetings;

(2) Information and Resources: articles in professional journals, panels at meetings, multi-media websites and hard-copymaterial dissemination to support faculty instruction for teachers;

(3) Mini-grants and Regional Networks: to nurture and support grassroots innovation in teacher education on individualcampuses. PMET efforts will be focused particularly in California, New York, North Carolina, Nebraska, and Ohio.

An extensive article on the PMET program and how MAA members can participate will appear in the March issue of FOCUS.

ANNOUNCINGANNOUNCINGANNOUNCINGANNOUNCINGANNOUNCING

MAA’S PMET PROGRAM

Preparing Mathematicians to Educate Teachers

PMET WORKSHOPS SUMMER 2003

For faculty preparing elementary teachers:

June 15-21, 2003, Arcata, CA, organized by Patrick Callahan

August 3-15, 2003, Boone, NC, organized by David Royster and Holly Hirst

June 1-7, 2003, Lincoln, NE, organized by Jim Lewis and Ruth Heaton.

For faculty preparing secondary teachers:

June 8-20, 2003, Potsdam, NY, organized by Ed Dubinsky (with second session to be held inSummer, 2004)

Check MAA Online for full information, including workshop descriptions, and applications:www.maa.org/pmet.

The PMET workshops for 2003 are contingent upon expected notice of awards from NSF/DUE andTexas Instruments.

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MASSACHUSETTS

WILLIAMS COLLEGEThe Williams College Department ofMathematics and Statistics invites appli-cations for two positions in mathemat-ics and one position in statistics, begin-ning fall 2003, all at the rank of assistantprofessor (in exceptional cases, moreadvanced appointments may be consid-ered). We are seeking highly qualifiedcandidates who have demonstrated ex-cellence in teaching and research, andwho will have a Ph.D. by the time of ap-pointment.

Williams College is a private, residential,highly selective liberal arts college withan undergraduate enrollment of ap-proximately 2,000 students. The teach-ing load is two courses per 12-week se-mester and a winter term course everyother January. In addition to excellencein teaching, an active and successful re-search program is expected.

To apply, please send a vita and have threeletters of recommendation on teachingand research sent to the Hiring Commit-tee, Department of Mathematics and Sta-tistics, Williams College, Williamstown,MA 01267. Teaching and research state-ments are also welcome. Evaluations ofapplications will begin on or after No-vember 25 and will continue until thepositions are filled. Williams College isdedicated to providing awelcoming in-tellectual environment for all of its fac-ulty, staff and students; as an EEO/AAemployer, Williams especiallyencouragesapplications from womenand underrepresented minorities. Formoreinformation on the Department ofMathematics and Statistics, visit http://www.williams.edu/Mathematics.

NEW YORK

Marymount College of FordhamUniversityMarymount College of Fordham Univer-sity anticipates an opening for a two-yearvisiting Assistant Professor of Mathemat-ics position beginning fall 2003. Dutieswill include teaching a variety of elemen-tary and advanced courses in mathemat-

EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES

ics. Requirements include a Ph.D. inmathematics, evidence of outstandingteaching and a commitment to scholar-ship in mathematics. Send resume, tran-scripts and three letters of recommenda-tion to: Lita Porter, Secretary, Depart-ment of Mathematics and Computer In-formation Sciences, Marymount College,Tarrytown, New York, 10591

PENNSYLVANIA

University of Pittsburgh at BradfordMathematics: Tenure-track AssistantProfessor position to begin September2003. Ph.D. or Ed.D. in math earned ornear completion. A strong commitmentto undergraduate education on a smallrural campus and potential for scholarlywork are essential. Applicants with matheducation background or a willingnessto develop this expertise will be givenfavorable consideration. Teaching assign-ments will include algebra, pre-calculus,and fundamentals of mathematics. Sendletter, vita, official transcripts, and 3 let-ters of reference to: Dr. Yong-Zhuo Chen,Math Search Committee, University ofPittsburgh at Bradford, 300 CampusDrive, Bradford, PA 16701-2898. The se-lection process will begin March 10,2003, and continue until the position isfilled. Women and minorities are encour-aged to apply. Visit our website atwww.upb.pitt.edu. AA/EOE

MOSE Math AdPDFRules do not print.

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Advertising Information for Display & Classified Ads

fonts). PDF files are also acceptable.

Camera-ready art: Should be preparedaccording to the mechanical specifica-tions shown on this page.Classified Rates (includes a a free list-ing in MAA Online to appear the samemonth as the print ad): $2.25 per word.

Contact the MAA Advertising Depart-ment toll free at 1-866-821-1221, fax:(703) 528-0019. Ads may be sent viaemail to ads@catalystcom.com.

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23

February 2003

ALLEGHENY MOUNTAIN

April 4-5, 2003-Penn State UniversityDuBois, PA

EASTERN PA & DELAWARE

April 12, 2003-Wilkes UniversityWilkes-Barre, PA

FLORIDA

February 21-22, 2003-JacksonvilleUniversity, Jacksonville, Florida

ILLINOIS

March 28-29, 2003-Illinois CollegeJacksonville, IL

INDIANA

March 28-29, 2003-Butler UniversityIndianapolis, IN

INTERMOUNTAIN

March 19-20, 2003, Weber StateUniversity, Ogden, UT

IOWA

April 4-5, 2003-University ofNorthern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA

KANSASApril 4-5, 2003-Hays, KS

KENTUCKY

April 4-5, 2003-Bellarmine UniversityLouisville, KY

LOUISIANA-MISSISSIPPI

February 21-22, 2003-MississippiCollege, Clinton, MS

MD-DC-VA

April 11-12, 2003-Norfolk StateUniversity, Norfolk, VA

METRO. NEW YORK

May 3, 2003-La Guardia CommunityCollege (CUNY)

MICHIGAN

May 2-3, 2003-Saginaw Valley StateUniversity, University Center, MI

MISSOURI

April 4-5, 2003-Washington UniversitySt. Louis, MO

NEBRASKA-SOUTHEAST SOUTHDAKOTA

March, 2003-University of South Dakotaat Vermillion, Vermillion, SD

NEW JERSEY

April 5, 2003-Kean University, Union, NJ

November 8, 2003-Raritan ValleyCommunity College, North Branch, NJ

NORTH CENTRAL

April 25-26, 2003- Malcalester CollegeSt. Paul, MN

Fall 2003-University of Sioux FallsSioux Falls, SD

NORTHEASTERN

June 13-14, 2003-Massachusetts Collegeof the Liberal Arts, North Adams, MA

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, NEVADA,HAWAII

February 22, 2003-College of MarinKentfield Campus, Kentfield, CA

OHIO

April 4-5, 2003-Ohio State UniversityColumbus, OH

October 17-18, 2003- Ohio NorthernUniversity, Ada, OH

OKLAHOMA-ARKANSAS

March 28-29, 2003-The University ofTulsa, Tulsa, OK

PACIFIC NORTHWEST

June 20-21, 2003-Whitman College

ROCKY MOUNTAIN

April 2003-United States Air ForceAcademy, Colorado Springs, CO

SOUTHEASTERN

March 21-22, 2003-Joint Meeting withAtlantic Section of SIAM, Clemson, SC

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

March 8, 2003-Harvey Mudd CollegeClaremont, CA

SOUTHWESTERN

April 5-6, 2003-New Mexico Institute ofMining and Technology, Socorro, NM

SEAWAY

April 4-5, 2003 Alfred UniversityAlfred, NY.

November 7-8, 2003-Rochester Instituteof Technology, Rochester, NY

TEXAS

April 3-5, 2003-Sam Houston StateUniversity, Huntsville, TX

WISCONSIN

April 25-26, 2003-University ofWisconsin-Marathon CountyWausau, WI

September 26-28, 2003 (Meeting forProject NExT Wisconsin) Bundy HallConference Center, Menomonie, WI

MAA Section Meeting Schedule 2003