Math and Computer Science Faculty
Dickinson College
Our faculty members will discuss careers and graduate school in these
disciplines options, outlook and what you can do now to prepare. Sarah
Bair from the Education Department will join us to talk about careers in
teaching mathematics and the certification process. We are planning a
panel-style discussion with many opportunities for questions and comments,
so have your list of questions ready.
Dr. Barry Tesman
The dealer seems to have the advantage in many popular card games. (Did you
ever think about why you are not allowed to deal blackjack in the casinos of
Las Vegas?) In this talk, I will describe a very simple two-person card
game where the answer to the question, "Do you want to deal?", is not
immediately apparent. The analysis of this game, which involves elementary
aspects of combinatorics, probability, decision theory, infinite series, and
game theory, provides some surprising results and interesting lessons
concerning competitive strategies.
David Richeson
In 1751, Leonhard
Euler proved that a polyhedron with F faces, E edges, and V vertices
satisfies F - E + V = 2. Or did he? Euler never defined the term "polyhedron"
and this lack of precision began a mathematical dialogue that continued for
the next 100 years. During this time mathematicians tried to come to grips
with Euler's "theorem". They asked the nontrivial questions: what is a
polyhedron? What shapes satisfy Euler's formula? We will discuss this
fascinating history and see how it gave birth to the field of topology.
William Dunham
"The calculus," wrote John von Neumann, "was the first achievement of modern
mathematics, and it is difficult to overestimate its importance." In that
spirit, we take a stroll through the history of calculus, stopping along the
way to consider those who created the subject in the late 17th century
(Newton, Leibniz, the Bernoullis, l'Hospital), the great 18th century
consolidator (Euler), and a few of the figures who carried it through the
19th century and up to the present (Cauchy, Weierstrass). The talk is
primarily historical and expository, although some math will appear for
calculus lovers.
Dick Forrestor
In this talk we introduce the main concepts of numerical analysis, which is
the branch of mathematics that deals with methods for solving problems by
purely numerical computations. We will discuss how many of the solution
techniques learned in calculus and linear algebra are not as straightforward
and reliable as they seem. Specifically, we will consider the challenges of
interpolation - the fitting of a function to a given data set.
Jeff Martens
A brief overview of cryptography and an introduction to sharing secrets.
Along the way, we'll discuss Diffie-Hellman, finding discrete
logarithms, and generating large primes.
Stevan Kominac '06
Stevan will talk about his summer internship at
Intel, addressing topics such as what roles liberal
arts students play in a high-tech industry; how to
take advantage of social networking and the
"small world" phenomenon to assure an interview;
how an applicant can succeed in an
interview in a high-tech company.
Ben Krause '07
A discussion of a student's summer work learning to use the Java Constraint
Kit, a set of Java-based tools used to find solutions that satisfy certain
constraints. The research involved using this constraint kit to test
specifications written in the JML formal specification language.
Chats from previous semesters:
11/29: Do you want to deal?
(The Mathematical Analysis of Le Her)
Associate Professor of Mathematics
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Dickinson College
11/15: Euler's Polyhedral Formula: 1750 - 1850
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Dickinson College
10/26: A Brief History of Calculus
Truman Koehler Professor of Mathematics
Muhlenberg College
10/11: What Mathematicians Never Told You About Solving Problems
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Dickinson College
10/6: Discrete Logarithms and the Secret Sharer
Department of Information Systems
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
9/27: Computer Science Major in the Silicon Valley
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Dickinson College
9/20: Learning to use the Java Constraint Kit
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Dickinson College
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