The BIG SIGMAA News
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The BIG SIGMAA News Volume 15, Number 2 Fall 2019 Business, Industry, and Government Special Interest Group of the Mathematical Association of America BIG Events at JMM in Denver Special points of In January, the Joint Mathe- Different Problems, Common Threads: Computing the diffi- interest: matics Meetings (the joint culty of Mathematical Problems, Karen Lange (Wellesley annual meeting of the Ameri- College) The Joint Mathematics can Mathematical Society and Meetings will be held January Mathematical Frameworks for Signal and Image Analysis the Mathematical Association (Colloquium Lectures), Ingrid Daubechies (Duke Universi- 15-18 in Denver . of America) returns to Denver ty) The BIG Contributed Paper after a long absence. (The meetings were last held in In Praise of Small Data: Statistical and Data Science Session will be held on Thurs- Denver in 1983). In addition (Josiah Willard Gibbs Lecture), Nancy Reid (University of day morning, January 16, to the sessions sponsored by Toronto) beginning at 8:00. the AMS and the MAA, there The Mathematics of Life: Making Diffusion Your Friend The BIG SIGMAA busi- will also be some sessions (SIAM Invited Address), James Keener (University of Utah) ness meeting will be held on sponsored by the Association for Women in Mathematics, Biomedical Data Sharing and Analysis at Scale, Bonnie Ber- Friday, January 17, at 4:30, the National Association of ger (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) with the reception following at Mathematicians, the Society of 5:15. A Numerical and Analytical Study of Dynamic Materials, Industrial and Applied Mathe- Suzanne Weekes (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) maticians, and the Association for Symbolic Logic. JMM claims to be the largest meet- 2020 meetings will be held esting sessions of shorter ing of mathematicians in the January 15–18. As always, talks. Several of the invited world; over 5,900 mathemati- there is an exciting lineup of talks might be of particular cians attended the meetings invited speakers and, of interest to BIG SIGMAA last January in Baltimore. The course, there are lots of inter- (Continued on page 3) Inside this New Officers in the BIG SIGMAA issue: The results are in, and the Lee University in Cleveland, mathematics majors of non- Michel Rolle 2 BIG SIGMAA has elected TN. Maher-Boulis received academic careers. During her three new officers who will her master’s and Ph.D. in tenure at Lee University she The Puzzle Corner 2 begin two-year terms at the pure mathematics, with a mi- developed a bachelor’s degree conclusion of the Joint Meet- nor in financial mathematics, with emphasis on actuarial A Limerick 4 ings in January. from Florida State University. sciences, created a mathemat- She is currently BIG SIG- ics internship program, se- A Winter Fig 4 The new Chair of the BIG MAA’s Secretary/Treasurer. cured formal partnerships SIGMAA is Caroline Maher- Caroline’s interests include with local businesses and in- The Puzzle Corner 4 Boulis. Dr. Maher-Boulis is a raising awareness among (Continued on page 3) Solution professor of mathematics at Page 2 The BIG SIGMAA News Michel Rolle (1652—1719) November 8, 2019 marks the three each number having seven digits. The which is ironic, since Rolle ‘s theorem hundredth anniversary of the death of public recognition of his achievement is essential for basic proofs in calculus. the French mathematician Michel led Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the control- He strove intently to demonstrate that Rolle, for whom Rolle’s Theorem is ler general of finance and secretary of calculus gave erroneous results and named. state for the navy under King Louis was based on unsound reasoning. He XIV, to reward Rolle with a pension, quarreled so vehemently on the sub- Rolle was born on April 21, 1652, in and it led François Michel le Tellier, ject that the Académie des Sciences Ambert, in central France. The son of Marquis de Louvois, the secretary of was forced to intervene on several a shopkeeper, Rolle received only an state for war, to employ Rolle to tutor occasions. He eventually, however, elementary education. He worked for his son in mathematics. Louvois also conceded that he was wrong. a time in Ambert as a transcriber for a arranged for Rolle to have an adminis- notary and then as an assistant to sev- While Rolle’s forte was always Dio- trative position in the Ministry of War, eral attorneys. In 1675 he moved to phantine analysis, his most important but Rolle disliked the work and soon Paris. A short time later he married, work was a book on the algebra of resigned. and children quickly followed. He equations, called Traité d’algèbre, pub- struggled to support his family on his In 1685 Rolle was elected to the lished in 1690. That book contains the meager wages. Despite his financial Académie des first published problems and minimal education, Sciences, but to a description in though, he studied algebra and Dio- very low-level Europe of the phantine analysis on his own. position; he re- Gaussian elimina- ceived no regular tion algorithm, Rolle’s fortune changed dramatically salary until 1699, which Rolle called in 1682 when he published an elegant when he was pro- the method of solution of a difficult, unsolved prob- moted to a sala- substitution. Some lem in Diophantine analysis that had ried position. This examples of the been posed by Jacques Ozanam; the was a distin- method had previ- problem was the following: guished post be- ously appeared in Find four numbers, the dif- cause of the 70 algebra books, and ference of any two being a members of the Isaac Newton had perfect square and the sum Academy, only 20 previously de- of the first three being a per- were paid. He scribed the meth- fect square. remained at the od in his lecture Académie for the notes, but New- Ozanam had stated that the smallest rest of his life. ton’s notes were of the four numbers would have at not published least 50 digits, but Rolle found four Rolle was one of numbers satisfying the conditions with the most vocal early critics of calculus, (Continued on page 4) The Puzzle Corner While walking down the street in an unfamiliar but friendly city with your host, you meet three men walking in the opposite direction--Abe, Bob, and Cal. Your host tells you that one is a farmer, one is a salesmen, and one is a debt collector. It being a friendly city, you stop to chat with the three men, asking them about their jobs. They respond as follows: Abe: Cal is a salesman but Bob is not a debt collector. Bob: Abe is a farmer but Cal is not a debt collector. Cal: Abe is a debt collector but Bob is not a salesman. Your host then remarks that only one of your new friends has told you the truth. What is each man's job? (solution on page 4) Volume 15, Number 2 Page 3 BIG Events at JMM in Denver (continued) (Continued from page 1) 4:15, followed by a reception. All BIG secondary education SIGMAA members are invited to at- A panel discussion on Friday members; see the inset. You can find tend the business meeting and the the details at the JMM website. reception. The reception will provide afternoon on actuarial science an opportunity to meet old friends education The BIG contributed paper session and to network with other BIG math- will be held on Thursday morning, The BIG Career Center in the ematicians. beginning at 8:00. Four speakers, from exhibits hall, a booth designed to industry, government, and academia, Other BIG events at the meeting in- provide BIG employers and BIG will talk about their experiences in clude the following activities. For job seekers a centrally-located applying mathematics to BIG prob- more information on these, go to the venue to network. lems. JMM website. We hope to see many of you in Den- The BIG SIGMAA business meeting A panel discussion on Wednesday ver. will be held on Friday afternoon at afternoon on data science post- New Officers in the BIG SIGMAA (continued) (Continued from page 1) sored project dealing with modeling Purdue University, the University of effective control strategies to mitigate Minnesota, and the University of dustries and supervised BIG projects the influence of frog skin diseases in Montana, after which he was an assis- with students. She is an experienced the ecosystem. He also had an oppor- tant professor at Bethany Lutheran grant manager having secured several tunity to work for projects sponsored College in Mankato, MN, and at grants from the Tennessee Higher by the Indian Space Research Organi- Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY, Education Commission, local busi- zation, where he used data mining where he won the university-wide nesses and industries and a 5-year techniques to analyze remote sensing Outstanding New Teacher award in grant from NSF in which she collabo- images. During his tenure at DSU, he 2010. Dr. Luttman then spent 7 years rates with ten other institutions. Her has mentored several students on their at the U.S. Department of Energy’s vision for BIG SIGMAA includes research projects coming directly from Nevada National Security Site as a creating more networking opportuni- Business, Industry, and Government scientist, personnel manager, and sci- ties and collaborating with MAA sec- Agencies through the MAA PICMath entific advisor to the National Nuclear tions to include BIG SIGMAA activi- program. At DSU, as a curriculum Security Administration, before mov- ties in their annual meetings. developer and program coordinator of ing to PNNL in spring 2019. He has the B.S. Applied and Computational served on the MAA Committee for The new Vice Chair for Programs is Mathematics degree, he has coordinat- Graduate Students, was a 2007 Project Vinodh Chellamuthu.