The Spring 2022 Indiana MAA Section Meeting will take place in-person at Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion, Indiana on Saturday, April 9, 2022. A schedule for the day, abstracts for contributed talks, and a poster for the meeting are available below.
All attendees are required to wear masks indoors at the conference and will be asked to affirm these safety requirements upon arrival. All attendees are also expected to abide by the MAA Code of Conduct (with special attention paid to Section IV: Expectations for Safe and Inclusive Meetings).
Plenary speakerS
Talithia Williams, HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE
Power in Numbers: The Rebel Women of Mathematics
The movie “Hidden Figures” brought visibility to the lives of African American women who served as NASA “human computers” in the 1960s, women who dreamed the impossible in a field where their presence was lacking. When it comes to inspiring the future productivity and innovation of our nation, we are all on the front lines. In this talk, I'll discuss my personal journey as a woman of color in mathematics and share ways we can excite public interest in STEAM, building upon the rich legacy of the Hidden Figures that have come before us. As we shift the fixed mindset around scientific ability, we can begin conversations that improve public perception of STEAM and bring people from all backgrounds into this important work.
Rodrigo Pérez, IUPUI
The Geometric Series in Greek Mathematics
Joint work with Stefano Silvestri, Rome
Is there a center, a navel, to the mathematical universe? An excellent candidate would be the Pythagorean Theorem. In this talk we will make the case for a less conspicuous concept: the Geometric Series.
Every famous computation done by the modern founders of Calculus, when developing their theory, relied on the GS. It was the only way to deal with infinite processes before heavy duty techniques were invented.
Similarly, the Greeks, taking the first primitive steps toward a form of Calculus (the Method of Exhaustion), relied on the first Proposition of Book 10 of Euclid’s Elements; this was their version of the GS.
We will trace the development of Greek Mathematical thought through its most famous episodes: musical theory, Pythagorean means, the discovery of irrationality, cube duplication, the Euclidean algorithm, perfect numbers. . . . Our goal is to show how each of these illustrates a stage of the evolution of ideas leading to Proposition 10.1. We conclude with the only attestation of a true GS computation in any known ancient civilization document.
indiana next Panel discussion
Topic: Mentoring Undergraduates
Panelists:
Zsuzsanna Szaniszlo, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Valparaiso University
Dan Callon, Professor of Mathematics at Franklin College
Lee Trent, Undergraduate at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Moderator:
Justin Lambright, Associate Professor of Mathematics at Anderson University
Description: Dr. Szaniszlo will lead us in a discussion about a systematic approach to mentoring and share from a handbook on this she helped create at Valparaiso. Dr. Callon will share Franklin’s noteworthy approach to career guidance where the emphasis is on professional skills and dispositions, integrated into course structure, activities, and assessments. Lee Trent from Rose-Hulman will share her experience mentoring through the Online Undergraduate Resource Fair for the Advancement and Alliance of Marginalized Mathematicians.
CONTRIBUTED TALKS
The Call for Papers is now closed.
icmc
The Indiana Collegiate Mathematics Competition, often referred to as the ICMC, is a team-based competition for students from area colleges and universities. In this competition, students spend two hours working in teams of up to three members to solve a series of questions on a wide range of mathematical topics. The ICMC began in 1966 and is still going strong! For more information about the ICMC, visit https://www.indiana.maa.org/icmc.
The 2022 ICMC will take place in the morning on Saturday, April 9th as part of the spring section meeting. The deadline for registering teams for the ICMC has now passed.
Contact Student Activities Coordinator Colin McKinney (mckinneyc@wabash.edu) with any questions about the ICMC.
REGistration
Registration is now closed. Regular registration rates apply to everyone EXCEPT students (high school, undergraduate, and graduate), high school teachers, retired and unemployed participants, and non-mathematician guests. Regular registration is $25 until March 23, 2022 and is $30 after March 23, 2022. Students (high school, undergraduate, and graduate), high school teachers, retired and unemployed participants, and non-mathematician guests receive free registration for the conference.
The deadline to order lunch has now passed.
local information
Conference participants are asked to park in Lots 23 or 24 (near the lower right corner on the campus map), near Center Hall (labeled I). Registration is in the Barnes Student Center (in the center, labeled “B” and with the yellow star)
A block of hotel rooms was reserved at Holiday Inn Express (1000 N Baldwin Ave, Marion, IN 46952) for the night of Friday, April 8th at the special rate of $119+tax for a single king room and $129+tax for a double queen room. The deadline to reserve a room as part of this block has now passed.