OAKLAND UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS AND STATISTICS
ADVISING NEWSLETTER
WINTER, 1999 -- Volume 4, Number 2
Become a mathematics tutor
The Academic Skills
Center (103 NFH, 370-4215) needs your help! Mathematics tutors are in
short supply. If you've had several mathematical sciences courses at OU
and want to help your fellow students (while at the same time gaining
valuable experience and earning a little spending money, with very
flexible hours), give them a call. They also need good math students to
serve as Supplemental Instruction leaders.
Special courses in spring and summer
We do not usually offer many advanced courses in the Spring or Summer
terms (although APM 257 and MTH 256 do show up). This spring we have a
course in scientific visualization taught by Professor Nachman over the
World Wide Web (APM 405). Please speak to the instructor for more
details, including prerequisites.
And after you graduate?
Many opportunities are open to you after you complete your undergraduate
major in mathematics or applied statistics. One thing to consider
seriously is graduate school. Here at Oakland University we offer several
different masters degrees in mathematics and applied statistics, and our
new PhD program in the applied mathematical sciences might be appropriate
for you. Contact the Coordinator of Graduate Programs, Professor Kevin
Andrews (andrews@oakland.edu,
Room 548 SEB, 370-4025), for more information, and/or visit the
departmental Web site (http://www.math.oakland.edu).
Early Registration coming
Here's a rundown on the advanced undergraduate courses being offered Fall
1999, as you continue thinking about your course selections (early
registration starts in May). One special note: The class
schedule for both Summer and Fall will have a new look because of the new
student records system being implemented in June. In particular,
courses will be listed by rubric rather than by
department, so you will have to look in separate parts of the
booklet for APM, MTH, and STA offerings.
APM 463: Graph Theory and Combinatorial Mathematics (E. Cheng,
TuTh 7:30 PM)
If you liked discrete mathematics (APM 263), then
you'll like this course, which goes into more depth on these topics. Many
of the students in the class are graduate students in computer science,
but mathematics majors tend to do just as well as, if not better than,
these students.
MTH 302: Introduction to Advanced Mathematical Thinking (Schmidt,
MWF 10:40 AM)
Many advanced mathematics courses deal with why things
are true, not just getting answers to problems. In this course you will
become proficient in understanding and writing proofs. It is required for
math majors and prerequisite to many advanced courses.
MTH 351: Advanced Calculus I (Schochetman, TuTh 3:30 PM)
This
course, required of all math majors, explores calculus from a deeper and
more theoretical point of view.
MTH 361: Geometric Structures (Wright, MW 3:30 PM)
The
Euclidean geometry you learned in high school is not the only interesting
or useful way to model space. This course, required of math majors in
STEP (and an elective for other math majors), looks at some of the
alternatives.
MTH 372: Number Theory (Park, MW 7:30 PM)
Once the purest
of pure mathematics, this subject now finds important applications in such
areas as Internet security. The course explores prime numbers, modular
arithmetic, equations with integer solutions, and related topics as time
and interest dictate.
STA 322: Regression Analysis (Perla, MW 7:30 PM)
If you liked
STA 226, and especially the time spent studying linear regression and
correlation, you should look into this course. All statistics majors must
take this course, and it is an elective for math majors. It is
recommended that you have seen matrix operations (like multiplicative
inverses) before.
STA 426: Statistical Analysis by Graphical and Rank Order Methods (Sen, TuTh 3:30 PM)
The
subject matter here includes exploratory data analysis and nonparametric
methods, which are increasingly important in modern statistics.
STA 427: Introduction to Mathematical Statistics (Pan, MW 5:30
PM)
This is the first half of a year-long sequence in the theoretical
foundations of probability and statistics, required of all statistics
majors and an elective for math majors.
In all cases, you can obtain further information by talking to the
instructor.
If you have a request for future years, make your desires known to us!
Also, don't forget that you can do independent studies of
topics not
regularly offered as courses. And if you meet the prerequisites, consider
taking graduate courses or advanced computer science
courses, such as APM 673, MTH 551, MTH 571, STA 525, STA 528, STA 529, or
CSE 343 (to mention those that are being offered next Fall).
Contact information
The Newsletter editor is Professor
Jerrold Grossman, the chief
undergraduate adviser in the Department. We welcome your comments and
suggestions;
in fact, we welcome your contributions of material, if
there's something you'd like to share with your fellow majors.
The department's Web Page currently has the following
URL:
http://www.math.oakland.edu. It has been redesigned by the
departmental secretary Laurel Sandor -- come have a look! (Laurel would welcome your suggestions, too.)
Netscape browsers are available on the computers in the many computer
laboratories on campus.
All faculty have e-mail addresses that are the same as
their last names (followed by @oakland.edu), with certain exceptions:
bjiang, echeng, pshi, schochet, and w2zhang. Phone numbers and office
locations can be obtained from the Department office (368 SEB, 370-3430)
or the Web.
Finally, a word about contact in the other direction. The Department
often has information that would be of interest to our majors. We would
like to compile an e-mail mailing list, so that we can get the word out to
you quickly whenever we have information to share. To help us do this,
please send an e-mail message to Professor Grossman (grossman@oakland.edu) with your preferred
e-mail address. He will compile the mailing list and send out e-mailings
as the need arises.
Come to a math talk!
Every week or two the Department holds a Colloquium, in which a
mathematician or statistician (either someone in the Department or a
visiting dignitary) presents a talk on recent progress in some area of
mathematics or statistics. Colloquium announcements, which describe the
subject and the speaker, are posted on the bulletin boards near the
departmental office and on the Web.
You may not understand all the details, but you can
get a good feeling for what research in the mathematical
sciences is all about by dropping in. Free refreshments are
served prior to the talks.
Keep the advisers busy
Majors in mathematics or statistics should consult with their
advisers at least once a year. Professor Grossman is currently
the departmental chief adviser, and he can be found in Room 346 SEB most
of every day (370-3443, grossman@oakland.edu). Sit down with him
to review your progress, check the myriad graduation requirements, explore
your options after you graduate, or just talk about mathematics. He has
some nice give-aways, too, such as a booklet prepared by the Mathematical
Association of America spotlighting careers in the mathematical sciences,
and copies of recent issues of Math Horizons, a magazine for
majors.
Summer opportunities
Each summer at numerous sites around the country, talented mathematics and
statistics majors take part in programs, funded by the National Science
Foundation, which allow them to do real mathematical
research. Room and board are paid for you, and you receive a
small stipend in most programs. You should seriously consider
participating in one of these programs.
A few of these programs are specifically designed to encourage women in
mathematics. There are also some that include course work as well. For
more details, see Professor
Grossman or check out this Albion
College Web site: http://spider.albion.edu/fac/math/opportun.htm.
Another activity you might consider for the summer is being a tutor in
our
Summer Mathematics Institute for high school students; see its Web page
(http://www.math.oakland.edu/Ousmi99/ousmi99.html)
for details.
Upcoming Conference
On May 7-8 at Eastern Michigan
University in Ypsilanti, the annual meeting of the Michigan Section of the Mathematical Association of America is being
held. Students are encouraged to attend (there is no registration fee),
and there will be sessions for student papers, as well as many talks and
workshops accessible to undergraduates. Details can be obtained from Professor Grossman or (when
it becomes available) on their Web site: http://www.michmaa.org.
A personal look
Each issue of the Newsletter will include a feature on one member
of the Department faculty, telling you a little about his/her life and
interests, both professional and personal. We are proceeding by seniority
at Oakland, and with this issue we come to Professor Jerrold Grossman, who
has been at Oakland since 1974. He has been interested in mathematics as
long as he can remember, entering science fairs with math projects as a
kid, majoring in math at college (Stanford), and obtaining his PhD with a
thesis in algebraic topology at M.I.T.
Dr. Grossman likes to study different areas in mathematics and related
fields, rather than sticking to one subspecialty. His current research
interests focus on graph theory, but he has also worked in such fields as
number theory, statistics, and abstract algebra. Grossman's
constant (0.7373383...), which arises in functional iteration, is one
of his legacies to the mathematical world. His latest interest is in
mathematical bibliography, studying the collaboration patterns among
researchers (such as the late Paul
Erdos, who wrote 1500 papers with 500 different co-authors); his Web
page on this subject (http://www.oakland.edu/~grossman/ erdoshp.html) gets
about 80 visits a day.
On the teaching front, Dr. Grossman likes to teach a variety of
undergraduate and graduate courses in mathematics, statistics, and
computer science. He feels that the courses for elementary education
majors (MTE 210-211) are particularly important as a way to change the
popular misconceptions about mathematics and the public's negative
attitude toward the subject. He won Oakland University's Teaching
Excellence Award in 1992 and the state-wide Distinguished Teaching Award
of the Michigan Section of the Mathematical Association of America in
1994.
In addition to his academic duties, Professor Grossman is heavily
involved in campus committees and edits the state newsletter of the MAA.
Once a week he volunteers two hours of his time to Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, reading
mathematics textbooks onto tape.
Professor Grossman lives with his wife, Suzanne Zeitman (who is also a
mathematician) in Rochester Hills (a 10-minute bicycle ride from campus in
good weather) and likes to travel and compete in bridge tournaments. His
main disappointment in life is that his only child was killed in a car
crash in 1990 at age six. He invites anyone interested in more personal
or professional details to visit his Web page (http://www.oakland.edu/~grossman),
which also has lots of interesting links.
Brain teasers
Here's a trio of mathematically oriented puzzlers you might enjoy.
1. Suppose that there are 25 kids standing in the playground, each
equipped with a water pistol. It happens that the distances between pairs
of kids are all different. At a given signal, each kid shoots the kid
closest to him or her. Show that there must be at least one person who
stays dry.
2. Suppose that you have two ropes, each of which will burn in an hour
if you light one end (think of the rope as lying on a metal table). But
the burning rate is not uniform (e.g., you can't assume that half the rope
will burn in half an hour), nor are the ropes necessarily the same. Find a
way to measure out 3/4 hour.
3. Suppose that you have a stack of coins of which 17 are turned heads
up (the rest tails up). Assume that you are blindfolded and cannot tell
the heads/tails nature by feeling. Your job is to produce two stacks of
coins with the same number of heads up in each stack. You don't know how
many coins there are in the original stack (but it's more than 17).
March 16, 1999.