Mathematics and Computer Science

Shilad Sen

I am thrilled to be joining the Math / CS department this fall as a new faculty member. I graduated from Northwestern University with my B.M. in Saxophone Performance and B.A. in Mathematics in 1999, just as the internet bubble was taking off. For the next six years I lead a software team at a small startup called Sourcelight Technologies where we built movie recommender systems for companies like Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and Comcast.

In 2004 I returned to graduate school at the University of Minnesota. I was lucky enough to connect with GroupLens, a research group known for their focus on improving social software systems. As a researcher I study communities such as YouTube, Wikipedia, and Flickr where content is contributed by the community's users. I hope to empower people in these communities to be effective contributors by using machine learning techniques to make better use of user data. I also study user interfaces that encourage users to contribute more efficiently. My thesis centers on tags, user-contributed keywords that describe items such as images and videos.

I expect to teach a wide variety of courses at Macalester including Object-Oriented Programming, Internet Programming, Operating Systems and Networks. I also am excited about teaching a course on "Programming Collective Intelligence," where we apply machine learning and statistics techniques on user data to create recommender systems, search engines, and spam filters.

On a personal note, I am married to Katy Sen, who works as the Director of Research in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Partially due to this, I'm a political junkie. In the near future I plan to focus this passion into a community-maintained site about politics. I also play squash, and still play the saxophone regularly around town. I've released two CDs with a jazz quintet called Snowblind http://snowblindmusic.com and have just started playing with a new group called Ingo Bethke.

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Calculus Sequence

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Invisible Handshake

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We're hiring a tenure-track statistician to begin Fall 2009. Information & application

Mathematics and Computer Science Seminar
Tuesday, October 14, 2008, 3:00 pm, Olin-Rice 250

Was the 2004 election stolen? Adventures in election forensics

Mark Lindeman, Political Studies, Bard College

Some observers claim that exit polls and anomalous election returns provide evidence that John Kerry won – or should have won – the 2004 election. What can statistical analysis tell us about what did and didn’t go wrong in 2004 and other elections? Examples from 2004 will include the exit polls, the so-called “Connally anomaly” in southern Ohio, and excessive “undervotes” in New Mexico. We will also touch on examples from Florida in 2000 and 2006.

Please join us beforehand for tea with Professor Lindeman at the Right Angle at 2:15pm.

A New Way to Major in Math!

The mathematics major has been redesigned and now offers two paths to a major -- an updated, traditional path in Mathematics,and a new path in Applied Mathematics and Statistics.

Congratulations to the recipients of the 2008 student awards:

The Ezra Camp Award – Math: Sarah Sutter
The Ezra Camp Award – Computer Science: Owen Anderson
Konhauser Award – Math: Katherine Lim
Konhauser Award – Computer Science: Christopher Dragga

Competition Prizes - Sam Handler and Stiliyana Stamenova

Capstone Prize - Math: Innocent Dlamini

Capstone Prize - Computer Science: Sam Handler

Seen at the Senior Banquet, April 24, 2008

Professor Susan Fox and her Comp 494: Bodies and Minds: AI Robotics class. During Spring 2008, they worked with Lego robots, Pioneer robots, robots in simulation, and their course project, developing systems for our Barbie Jeep/Mac Rover/Awesome Bot2 PowerWheels robot.

Congratulations, Stella!

Stiliyana Stamenova, a junior double-majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics, has won a Google 2008 Anita Borg Scholarship, and a Microsoft Women's Scholarship, both extremely competitive programs that recognize outstanding students majoring in computer science at U.S. colleges and Universities. As a part of the second scholarship, she will have an internship at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington this summer.

Capstone Day - Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Presentation Schedule

68th Annual Putnam Competition in Mathematics

The results are in from the 68th Annual Putnam Competition in Mathematics. There were 3753 contestants from 516 institutions in the US and Canada who participated in the 6-hour math contest on December 1, 2007.

This is a very challenging contest. The most common score is 0 (out of 120) and a score of 10 puts you in the top third.

Seven Macalester students participated, and they should all be congratulated:
Saad Anjum, Jacob Bond, Chen Gu, Michael Kapernaros, Matthew Kusner,
Henrik Haakonsen, and Stella Stamenova.

Below are the top Macalester scores:

Name	Score	Rank / 3753
Chen Gu	22	367
Mike Kapernaros	19	571
Saad Anjum	10	1180
Jacob Bond	9	1359
Stella Stamenova	8	1412

Konhauser Problemfest Results, Feb 23, 2008, Held at Macalester College

13 teams from Carleton, St Olaf, Gustavus, St Thomas, Macalester

1. Gustavus Adolphus College 99 pts; Chenyu Yang, Mark Meyers, Erick Knight
2. St Olaf 90 pts; Thomas McCanville, Charles McEachern, Nathan Clement3. Carleton 85 pts; Rebecca Ferrell, Jonah Ostroff, Nathan Williams
4. Macalester 61 pts; Stella Stamenova, Sam Handler, Kyle Braam
5. Carleton 51 pts; Hannah Breckbill, Corey Barnes, Larry Rolen
6. Macalester 50 pts; Xi Luo, Hao Zou, Chen Gu
7. Carleton 48 pts; Daniel McDonald, David Lonoff, Max Olivier
8. Macalester 47 pts; Henrik Hakonsen, Saad Anjum, Casey Battaglino

Invisible Handshake, by Helaman Ferguson installed Feb 20, 2008. Read more about the sculpture at Invisible Handshake.

(Photo Credit: Stan Wagon). Also see http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CostaMinimalSurface.html

See the MAA Online article on Geometry in the Snow

featuring Professor Stan Wagon. http://www.maa.org/news/013008snow.html

A slide show showing the construction of snow sculptures is available at http://www.vimeo.com/651346/l:transcoded_email

Congrats to all the team members, and especially to the top team, who were one problem away from victory.

Results of the 2007 North Central Section of the Math. Assoc. of America Math Contest

1. 85 points Gustavus Adolphus College
2. 80 Macalester (Henrik Hakonsen, Viet Hoang, Saad Anjum)
3. 79 Univ. of Minnesota
4. 77 Winona State University
5. 76 St Olaf College
6. 72 Univ. of Manitoba
7. 70 Macalester (Xi Luo, Meng Wang, and Hao Zou)
8. 66 Carleton College
9. 63 University of Minnesota
10. 60 Macalester (Stella Stamenova, Sam Handler, Casey Battaglino)
10. 60 Univ. of St. Thomas
12. 58 Concordia College

26. 43 Macalester College (Matthew Kusner, Jacob Bond, Paul Burns)

53 teams took part from 25 institutions

Some perspective and stats:

1. The Macalester results for the past five years (2003-2007) at this event have been: second, first, first, first, second

2. Going back to the start in 1997, there were in addition two more firsts and a third for Mac.

3. This is Gustavus's first appearance on the podium. They were the only team to solve #10. Restricted to problems 1-8, Mac had the highest score (77).

4. The top score of 85 was the lowest winning score in the event's history.

Congratulations to the Mac teams!

The Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) held the regional contests of International Collegiate Programming Contest this past Saturday, Nov. 3rd. Macalester teams competed with hundreds of other contestants on slightly over 200 registered teams in the North Central Region's Programming Contest, which included teams from the upper Midwest and Canada. Macalester competed at a contest site at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa this year, along with teams from Gustavus Adolphus College and Luther College. At this site representing liberal arts colleges in our area, Macalester's two official teams came out on top (a third unofficial Macalester team also competed).

The two official team members and their place in the entire North Central Region are:

Macalester team 'Blue' finished 19th: David Brown, Wes Hart, Henrik Hakonsen

Macalester team 'Orange' finished 22nd: Stella Stamanova, Chris Dragga, Sam Handler

Macalester's unofficial team was not scored: Casey Battaglino, Ernesto Nunes, Kayton Parekh

Meet our newly hired faculty

Seen at the September 11 department picnic

Check the Department Calendar regularly!

Read manuscripts from past Honors Projects

David Bressoud elected as the next president of the MAA!

David Bressoud (DeWitt Wallace Professor of Mathematics) has been elected to serve as the next president of the Mathematical Association of America. He will serve as president for 2009–2010. David has served the MAA in many ways, including chairing the MAA's Committee on the Undergraduate Program in Mathematics. During his time as chair, David will be seen less on campus, as this office requires much travel. It is a real honor for David, for the department, and for Macalester. Congratulations, David.

What are our 2007 graduates doing? Student/Alumni News

See a video of the Square Wheel Bike in action!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=jchrQqH6bT0