News Archive

Thursday, April 24, 2008: Olaf Hall-Holt from St. Olaf College

A Pretty Problem in Partitions

Almost one century ago, the famous mathematician Ramanujan discovered three unexpected patterns in the sequence of partition numbers. The `Ramanujan congruences' led to extensive developments in the field of integer partitions. About a year ago, George Andrews, an expert in this area, discovered some similar patterns in a related sequence. The race is on to discover new congruences, as they appear to be related to many areas of mathematics (and even quantum physics). This fall, the combinatorialist Tina Garrett posed a pretty problem in partitions to an algorithms class at St. Olaf. She asked if there was a congruence mod 11 for the smallest part statistic. The class members have now made some exciting discoveries. This talk will explain their work and pose brand new open problems.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007: Laurette Tuckerman, CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) at the ESPCI (Ecole Superieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles) in France. Patterns of Turbulence ABSTRACT

Tuesday, October 9, 2007: Math and Society Lecture: Bart de Smit, Leiden University, The Netherlands

Escher ' s Print Gallery and the Land O'Lakes Effect

One of M. C. Escher's most intriguing works depicts a man standing in a gallery and examining a print of a city that contains the building that he himself is standing in. This picture, Print Gallery , contains a mysterious white hole in the middle. See <<http://www.mcescher.com/Gallery/recogn-bmp/LW410.jpg>>.

Working with Hendrik Lenstra, the speaker showed that some well-known mathematical ideas could be used to show that what Escher was trying to achieve in this work has a unique solution. This discovery led to a way to fill the void in Escher's print. With help from artists and computer scientists, a completion of the picture was constructed at the Leiden University. The white hole turns out to contain the entire image on a smaller scale, a phenomenon that, in the Dutch language, is called the Droste effect, after the Dutch chocolate maker Droste.

In Minnesota, this might be known as the Land O'Lakes effect, since a siimilar construction appears on packages of Land O'Lakes butter: the maiden is holding a package with the image of the maiden holding a package, and so on. In the talk the mathematics behind Escher's print and the process of filling the hole will be explained and visualized with computer animations.

For more details of the Escher project, see http://escherdroste.math.leidenuniv.nl

Mon. Nov. 12, 2007, Beyond Mac: Scot Adams, Director of Masters of Financial Mathematics spoke to math majors
Tues. Nov. 13, 2007, Department Seminar, Aaron Luttman , Bethany Lutheran College, Using Video to Understand Leaf Transpiration

Tues. Nov. 20, 2007, Department Seminar,Tom Halverson, Permutation, Coagulation, and Fragmentation

Congratulations to Professor Susan Fox! She was one of two awarded "best paper" at the conference FLAIRS-20, The 20th International Conference of the Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society, held in Key West, Florida, May 7-9, 2007. Her paper, "Introductory AI for Both Computer Science and Neuroscience Students", was presented in the AI Education special track, and describes what Professor Fox has done over the past 5-6 years to modify the Artificial Intelligence course to integrate the Cognitive Neuroscience Studies students into the course.

The following students were inducted into Pi Mu Epsilon, the honor society for mathematics:

Jacob Bond, Henrik Hakonsen, Sam Handler, Xi Luo, Evi Kourtella, Anne Moore, Jacob Norton, Naveen Sablani, Sarah Sutter, and Bernd Verst.

Upsilon Pi Epsilon is the computer science honor society. These students were inducted: Owen Anderson, Meth Chanla, Christopher Dragga, Sam Handler, Linh To, and Allison Yurcik. Congratulations to these students!

Students inducted into PME in prior years include: Owen Anderson, Kyle Braam, Meth Chanla, Christopher Dragga, Ozkan Erguden, Cem Ernaz, Steven Fazzio, Ian Goldstein, Aaron Heerboth, Jonas Hiltrop, Viet Hoang, Murat Ilgen, Tobin Kaufman-Osborn, Marija Krgovic, Katherine Lim, Andi Luka, Thanzaw Myint, Brendan Pierpont, Elad Rachevsky, Jeffrey Rogers, and Linh To.

Students inducted into UPE in prior years include: Evan Barnes, Jeffrey Barnes, Lars T. Johnson, Matt Klaber, and Leah Kluegel.

Congratulations to Karen Saxe! On Saturday, April 14, she was awarded the 2006 Teaching Award of the North Central Section of the Mathematical Association of America for excellence in college or university teaching. As her nominator wrote, "She is a skilled, thoughtful, caring teacher who listens to her students and her colleagues, and teaches the members of the Macalester community in varied ways."

And, at the faculty convocation on April 25, Karen Saxe was presented Macalester's Excellence in Teaching Award. "Two weeks ago Professor Karen Saxe was awarded the 2007 Teaching Award of the North Central Section of the Mathematical Association of America for excellence in college or university teaching. Upon hearing the news, Provost Michelfelder wrote, "Karen, we've all profited from the insight, openness, and integrity you bring to your work here at Macalester, work that cuts across many dimensions but together serves and strengthens the entire campus community. Cheers to you, and may you enjoy celebrating an award so richly deserved! We get to cheer again as Karen is awarded this year's Macalester Excellence in Teaching Award, recognizing her as an outstanding mathematics teacher and professor at Macalester College." [complete citation]

Karen Saxe spent two days at Grinnell College over spring break, giving their department colloquium to a very full house. She spoke on "How We Vote: Electoral Systems around the Globe." While there, she also consulted with department members about mathematics curriculum, particularly on upper-division courses in the analysis sequence.

Stan Wagon gave the keynote lecture at the Southern California MAA meeting in Pomona on March 3, where he spoke on the SIAM 100-Digit Challenge. One interesting thing he learned there was that Macalester's attempt to teach calculus in a way that accounts for the fact that many high school students have had it already is drawing national attention.

Stan Wagon and his team won a silver medal in the International Snow Sculpture Championship - Congratulations! Photographs of snow sculpture

Success in New Orleans!

Six faculty members – David Bressoud, Dan Flath, Paul Froeschl, Tom Halverson, Dick Molnar and Karen Saxe – spent 5 fast-paced and math-filled days in New Orleans at the annual Joint Mathematics Meetings. David gave two talks, one on Using History To Understand How To Teach Real Analysis and the other a Report on Calculus at Macalester College. Four students – Owen Anderson, Jeff Barnes, Elizabeth Gillaspy (returning from a semester abroad in Spain), and Jake Norton – also attended. Owen, Jeff and Elizabeth had posters in the MAA Undergraduate Poster Session. Owen and Jeff each won a prize of $100 for their work. Congratulations to Elizabeth, Owen, and Jeff! In addition to attending many good math talks, we did manage to eat well, and listen to some good live jazz.

Congratulations to our NCS contest teams!

Four Macalester teams took part in the recent NCS contest for colleges and universities in Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Manitoba, and far western Ontario. The top Mac team of Linh To, Anh Trinh, and Viet Hoang scored a perfect 100 points, tying for first with a team from St. Olaf. This marks the third year in a row that Macalester has finished in first place in this event. Our second team (Xi Luo, Meng Wang, and Hao Zou) finished in 9th place with a score of 81. The two other teams also finished in the top half with scores of 55 (21st place; Saad Anjum, Sean Hickey, Josh Paulson), and 53 (22nd place; Henrik Hakonsen, Casey Battaglino, Peter Calhoun). Congratulations to all.

Congratulations to Professor Stan Wagon!

The Macalester Problem of the Week web page was just awarded a "Talking Hands Website Award" (one of six for the fourth quarter of 2006). For more information, see <<http://www.faeriekeeper.net/talking.htm>> or <<http://www.faeriekeeper.net/261102.htm>>.

ACM trip - Octover 19-22

Over the weekend of Oct. 19th through the 22nd, Macalester's ACM chapter took a trip to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to attend a conference held by UIUC's ACM chapter. This conference featured talks by one of the co-founders of YouTube, the leader of Google's open source division, and the creator of the Red vs. Blue internet series, as well as various other researchers in areas varying from Natural Language Processing to compiler design. The group also participated in MechMania, a programming contest dedicated to programming an artificial intelligence system to play a simple computer game. The students who went on the trip were Owen Anderson, David Brown, Sam Handler, Leah Kluegel, and Stella Stamenova.

ACM Local Programming Contest Results:

On Saturday, October 14, two teams competed in the local programming contest held in OLRI 256. The contest was a nail-biter to the finish! In the end, the team of Sam Handler, Michael Jinkins, and David Ly beat out the team of Owen Anderson, Stella Stamenova, and David Brown. Each team solved three problems, but the winning team was just 18 minutes faster. Both teams qualify for the North Central Regional Programming Contest, to be held on November 11. Special appreciation goes to Leah Kluegel, who stood by as an alternate through the entire contest, ready to step in if any participant collapsed and needed to be replaced.

If you want to see what the contest problems were, just go to the contest web page.

SMAIL GALLERY EXHIBIT

The Art of Venn Diagrams

An exhibit, The Art of Venn Diagrams, by Peter Hamburger and Edit Hepp is on display in the Smail Gallery until August 2007. Shown below is a photo of Edit Hepp, the artist behind the Venn Diagram exhibit and an example related to a Venn diagram on 11 sets. The exhibit contains 13 images, including one 7-frame animation.

Michael Schneider

After 35 years, this semester will mark the end of my full-time teaching career at Macalester. I have been part of the Math/CS department here for 25 years and was at the University of Minnesota for 8 years before that. I also spent 2 years teaching at the University of Wisconsin--LaCrosse while working on my doctorate.

I received my Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Wisconsin in 1974, when the field was very young. So young, in fact, there were only 9 universities in the United States offering graduate degrees in the field. (It certainly made it a lot easier deciding where to apply!) My dissertation was in the area of computer networks, a relatively new topic, and I was part of a group that helped design and develop the FTP file-transfer protocol. After graduation I took a position at the University of Minnesota. In 1982 I was offered a chance to come to Macalester and start a new computer science program within the Department of Mathematics. It was a great opportunity that I immediately accepted. Now, 25 years later, Macalester has one of the strongest and most well respected undergraduate computer science programs of any liberal arts college in the U.S.

My scholarly interests lie in the areas of computer networks, parallel processing, and distributed systems. I have taught courses, published papers, and had many Honors students in these areas. For the last 5-10 years I have also been very interested in computer science curriculum. In 1998 I, along with faculty from 24 other national liberal arts colleges, helped design and publish a standard computer science curriculum for the liberal arts that is in use at hundreds of schools nationwide. In 2001 I had the good fortune to be one of 16 individuals charged with the writing of ACM/IEEE Computer Curriculum 2001, an international standard curriculum that has influenced computer science programs worldwide. I have also written 7 textbooks on Java programming, computer organization, software engineering, and a breadth-first overview of computing. Finally, one of my greatest loves (as many of you know) is traveling and working overseas. I have been fortunate to be the recipient of 4 Fulbright Awards to teach, consult, and do research in Mauritius, Malaysia, Nepal, and Mongolia. I have loved every minute of these amazing adventures, and I hope many more such experiences lie in my future.

This fall my wife Ruth and I are moving to New York City for six months while I will be a Visiting Professor at Columbia University. I will teach one course and help with undergraduate curriculum development. In Fall 2003 I spent a 6-month sabbatical at Columbia so I already know many computer science faculty and should have a wonderful experience. There is also a "hidden agenda" for this visit--a chance to be near our children Rebecca, Trevor, Ben, and Michael, as well as our darling grandson Liam. This visit will give me a chance to practice my important role as "grandpa." I will be back at Mac in spring, 2008 to teach one class--and I promise it won't be at 8:30!

April 26, 2007

Alice Dean, Professor of Mathematics & Computer Science, Skidmore College: 4:30-5:30 OLRI 250

Visibility Graphs: A story of faculty and student collaboration over 10+ years
Graphs are mathematical objects used to model networks such as electronic circuits, the Internet, and other applications that can be described in terms of interconnected nodes. Graph drawing is an active subfield of graph theory in which researchers study various ways to represent graphs so that they can work better as models for applications. Prof. Dean has studied one such type of representation, visibility graphs, for quite a few years, and she has worked with undergraduate students and faculty from a number of colleges (including Prof. Hutchinson!). This talk is a survey of some of the results that she and her student and faculty collaborators have discovered over the past ten or so years. Given the name, it's not too surprising that this topic is very visual in nature, and the talk should be accessible to all math and computer science majors.

Senior Banquet: Thursday, April 26, 5:30pm, Smail Gallery

 April 3, 2007

Bruce Schneier speaks on Counterterrorism in America: Security Theater Against Movie-Plot Threats. Weyerhaeuser Chapel

co-sponsored by Math/CS, History & Political Science departments

Departmental Profile - Joan Hutchinson

After 38 years of teaching, I will be retiring after the spring semester of 2007, retiring from teaching, but not from doing math! I had the good fortune to have a liberal-arts education at Smith College and then, after working for two years including punch-card programming at the Harvard Computing Center and casting and tuning work at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, to enter math graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania. At that time combinatorial analysis and graph theory were new and small disciplines, and again I had the good fortune to study and do my Ph.D. work with one of the new leaders of these fields, Prof. H.S. Wilf. Most of my teaching career has been spent at Smith College (1976 - 1990) and Macalester (1990 - 2007), but I've had great sabbaticals at campuses across the country and I've had great opportunities to travel to math conferences in many countries, including Hungary, Slovenia, Japan, and New Zealand. I've enjoyed my teaching a lot and have met and maintained friendship with many young people from around the globe. An important part of my career has always been my research, mainly in graph theory, graph algorithms, and graph drawing. I've written over sixty math research papers, mainly in my specialities of chromatic and topological graph theory, and expect to continue exploring, proving new theorems, and traveling to meet and work with my many and scattered research co-authors.

When retired I look forward also to having more time for my hobbies. I am an enthusiastic member of the Minnesota Band of Change Ringers, a group that rings "changes" on handbells in the traditional British style in which we ring permutations, rather than tunes, and guide our way mentally through the changes using graph theory and group theory. I look forward to more hiking and mountain climbing, cross-country and backcountry skiing at our home in the Colorado mountains, and I look forward to having more time to work with the Association for Women in Mathematics on their excellent programs to aid women of all ages in the our field. I have been married to Prof. Stan Wagon for 31 years; he will continue teaching half-time at Macalester after I retire.

Awards:

1994 recipient of the Carl. B. Allendoerfer Award for "Coloring ordinary maps, maps of empires, and maps of the moon" which appeared in Mathematics Magazine, 1993

1998 Winner of the Mathematical Association of America North Central Section Teaching Award

1999 Winner of the national Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Excellence in College or University Teaching.

2005 Honoree at "Graph Theory with Altitude, a conference in honor of Joan P. Hutchinson on the occasion of her 60th birthday", May 16-20, University of Colorado at Denver.

Some of my work has been written up in

What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences, Amer. Math. Soc., Vol. 1, 1993.

Mathematical Recreations by Ian Stewart, Scientific American, 1997

There is a chapter about me in

Notable Women in Mathematics, A Biographical Dictionary, by Laura Koch, C.Morrow and T. Perl, eds., Greenwood, 1998

TUESDAY, DEC. 12, OLRI 243, 3:00 - 4:00pm, DEPARTMENT SEMINAR

Stan Wagon (Macalester): Modern Venn Diagrams: Combining Math and Art to the Advantage of Both

TUESDAY, NOV. 28, OLRI 243, 3:00 - 4:00pm, DEPARTMENT SEMINAR

Pat Van Fleet, University of Saint Thomas: Wavelets and Lossless Compressiong in the JPEG2000 Image Compression Standard

TUESDAY, NOV. 28, OLRI 243, 4:45 - BEYOND MAC SPEAKER SERIES

Gretchen Sullwold and Evan Kennedy ('05): Internships and Jobs in IT

Math/CS Department Seminar

Tuesday Nov 14, 3:00-4:00 PM, Olin Rice 243

The Trouble with Trouble
Matt Richey
St. Olaf College

(Popomatic) Trouble is a delightfully simple family board game that uses a single die and markers that move around a (finite length!) board. By mildly altering the rules, many interesting questions arise that challenge one's intuition about probability. In this talk, we'll look at several rule changes. For each, the audience will be asked to put their probabilistic intuition on the line. Proofs, along with an actual Popomatic Trouble board, will be provided.

Departmental Profile

Danny Kaplan, Math/Computer Science, was awarded this year's Excellence in Teaching Award. The citation reads, in part: "In this age of academic super-specialization, he is quite a rarity-a faculty member who teaches mathematics, statistics, and computer science, but who does not have a degree in either mathematics, statistics, or computer science... Inside the classroom Danny is a respected and beloved teacher. His students admire him for challenging them to acquire the necessary mathematical skills, even when they mistakenly think they cannot. Students appreciate the support and effort he is willing to provide when the work is tough and the concepts are difficult. One student writes, "Professor Kaplan was one of the most interesting as well as challenging professors I ever had. His liveliness and devotion to our class inspired me to learn and to try the best that I could to understand the material."

Kaplan Citation

The Mathematica Kernel: Issues in the Design and Implementation, or
How to build a software octopus in your basement, given 20 very smart monkeys and 20 years.

November 12 - Daniel Lichtblau, Developer at Wolfram Research, Inc.

The Mathematica kernel is a large body of software that encompasses hundreds of person-years of in-house code as well as several large standalone libraries developed elsewhere. This makes for an endless assortment of possible problems, as well as offering many possibilities for future cutting-edge development. In this talk I will describe some of the issues that have arisen in my own work, and the ways we in the Kernel Group have gone about resolving them. I will also touch on some of the ways in which this complex software project plays off its strengths as it undergoes new development.

This talk is intended to be accessible to math and computer science students, and does not assume any prior knowledge of Mathematica. While specific examples will be presented, by and large the emphasis will be on generalities without too much technical detail.

The octopus of the subtitle is a metaphor for the multi-tentacled Mathematica kernel. The apelets come from the so-called "infinite monkey theorem". As they are very smart they require a mere four hundred monkey-years to do the job at hand. It is not yet clear what are the repercussions of mixing zoo and aquarium species in this cavalier manner.

Beyond Macalester Speaker Series - November 3 -Walgreens: Modern Marketing and the Traditional Drugstore

Alex Siskos ('93) and Cormac Seely ('05) will talk about their work with Walgreens. Employment and internship opportunities will be discussed.

Beyond Macalester speaker series - November 1

Denise Deschamps will speak on “Working in Europe” in OLRI 243, at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 1. Ms. DeChamps will first introduce the structure of Europe as it pertains to international projects she has worked on. She will then discuss what it is like to work in Europe and provide some insights from her long career working on software projects for the European Commission. She will finish by commenting on the current cooperation between the European Commission and the USA in the area of education.

AcroScore: A tool for authoring and scoring assignments and surveys - October 24

Danny Kaplan (Macalester) and Bernd Verst (Mac, '09)

We will describe the LaTeX/PHP/MySQL-based system that we built to simplify the process of writing and maintaining collections of assignment questions while allowing submissions to be graded either automatically or collated for efficient perusal. We'll talk about the kinds of questions that can be automatically graded, about the advantages of using such questions in our courses, and about the software tools on which the system is based.

Department Seminar: Proof

An open discussion about the play "Proof," which is being presented at Macalester on Oct 6, 7, and 8, as well as a discussion about the nature of proofs. This will be led by David Bressoud (Math/CS), Janet Folina (Philosophy), and possibly Harry Waters Jr (the director of the play).

MATHEMATICS AND SOCIETY LECTURE

Peter Hamburger, Western Kentucky University, will speak on Symmetry in Mathematics, Science, and Art, on Tuesday, September 19, at 3:00 p.m. in the John B. Davis Lecture Hall in the Campus Center. In many art forms some kind of symmetry is needed to create wonderful images. Symmetry creates beauty, but the most stunning images are often those whose symmetry is intentionally destroyed by the artist. Symmetry is widely used in mathematics and science as well, and in this talk we will explore some of the use of symmetry in mathematics, science, and art.

Much mathematical art (e.g., the Mandelbrot set) is based on solving an equation or iterating a formula. The aesthetic appeal comes from the fact that repetition yields always-changing shapes. Such art has flourished in recent decades as computer graphics capabilities have advanced. In most of this art some kind of symmetry is crucial. The talk will discuss the mathematical and artistic methods behind the graphics created by Edit Hepp, now on display in the Smail Gallery. Her work is of a different type, using not iteration or formulas, but ideas of combinatorics and geometry.

This annual lecture is sponsored by Macalester alumnus, Kurt Winkelmann, '78.

SMAIL GALLERY EXHIBIT OPENING

Tuesday, September 19, 2006, 4:30 p.m.

The Art of Venn Diagrams

An exhibit of art related to Venn diagrams will be shown in the Smail Gallery until August 2007. At this opening event the artist Edit Hepp and mathematician Peter Hamburger will discuss the techniques used to produce the complex images. Shown below is one example of a Venn diagram on 11 sets.

Congratulations to Math Professors Tom Halverson and Danny Kaplan!

Professor Tom Halverson was recently promoted to the rank of full professor and Professor Danny Kaplan is the recipient of Macalester's annual Excellence in Teaching Award (see Departmental Profile on the left).

The Math/CS Department says farewell & good luck to our graduating seniors

Thirty-two students who have majored or minored in mathematics will graduate on May 13. And, fifteen computer science majors or minors will receive diplomas. Congratulations to all; please stay in touch!

Putnam Results are in!

3545 contestants, from 500 institutions

TEAM RANK: 25th place (excellent)

INDIVIDUALS (scoring more than 10 points):

Michael Decker, 41 points, 115.5 rank, Honorable Mention II.
Nikolay Dinev, 29 points, 296.5 rank
Margarit Ivanov, 18 points, 601 rank
Kate Herbig, 12 points, 715.5 rank
Stiliyana Stamenova 11 points, 819 rank

Congratulations to everyone.

Congratulations & Welcome to Victor Addona

Professor Vittorio Addona will join the department as a tenure-track faculty member next year. Victor received his B.Sc. (2000), M.Sc. (2001), and Ph.D. (2005) in Statistics from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec. During his stay at McGill he taught the class Principles of Statistics and also worked as a statistical analyst at the Center for Clinical Epidemiology, Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. Victor's research interests are in the areas of survival analysis, clinical statistics, and Bayesian methods. He is fluent in French and Italian, as well as English, so this will also be a great opportunity to hone your skills in these languages! Victor and his fiancé, Isadora, are pictured at a recent celebration.

Konhauser Problemfest

The 14th Annual Konhauser Problemfest was held on Saturday, February 25th, at the University of Saint Thomas. Teams of three math students each competed from Augsburg, Carleton, St. Kate's, St. Olaf, St. Thomas, and Macalester. The four Macalester teams had a terrific showing placing 2nd (tie), 4th, 5th, and 8th out of 20 teams. A team from Carleton College took first place with 88 points, and the next two teams, one from Macalester and one from Carleton, tied for second with 85. Congratulations to all the Macalester participants:

2nd, Michael Decker, Nicky Dinev, Margarit Ivanov
4th, Kyle Braam, Henric Hakonsen, Meng Wang
5th, Owen Anderson, David Brown, Stella Stamenova
8th, Elizabeth Gillaspy, Kate Herbig, Sarah Sutter

The Konhauser Problemfest was started in 1993 in honor of the late Joe Konhauser, a long-time professor at Macalester who was a very active problemist. See the following link for more information and a copy of past exams. Competitions

Congratulations to Heather Lendway!

Heather was named Women's Swimmer of the Year at the 2006 MIAC Swimming & Diving Championship this past weekend. She is a graduating senior with majors in Math & Computer Science, and a minor in statistics. Way to go, Heather!

Joint Mathematics Meetings

Seven Macalester faculty and four students traveled to San Antonio, Texas January 12-15 for the Joint Mathematics Meetings of the AMS and MAA ( http://www.ams.org/amsmtgs/2095_intro.html). This is our large annual meeting, with roughly 5,500 in attendance!

Seniors Michael Decker and Kate Herbig and junior Jeff Barnes brought their mathematical talents. They presented the results of their summer research projects in the Undergraduate Student Poster Session (http://www.maa.org/students/undergrad/poster06.html). All three projects are in algebraic combinatorics and were supervised by Professor Tom Halverson. Michael's project is titled "A Model Representation for the Partition Algebra," Kate's is "The Planar Rook Monoid and Pascal's Triangle," and Jeff's is "Centralizers for 2-Dimensional Reflection Groups." Junior Elizabeth Gillaspy also attended. Elizabeth and Kate are both alumni of The Summer Mathematics Program for Women, an NSF-funded program to encourage and support women in their study of mathematics held at Carleton College and will be meeting with that group. Professors Ahearn, Bressoud, Flath, Halverson, Molnar, Roberts, and Saxe attended also attended.

MAA/NCS Math Contest Results

Five Macalester teams participated in the Math Assoc. of America's North Central Section Math Contest in November. Sixty-five teams from Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Manitoba, and Ontario took part. Macalester's top team (Nikolay Dinev, Michael Decker, Margarit Ivanov) posted a perfect score of 100 to win the event, in a tie with a team from the Univ. of Minnesota. The other four teams from Macalester all finished in the top half:

13. Linh To, Anh Trinh, Viet Hoang, 71 points
17. Meng Wang, Ben Galick, Venelin Tsonev, 62 points
24. Kate Herbig, Sarah Sutter, Elizabeth Gillaspy, 54 points
30. Kyle Braam, Stiliana Stamenova, Nisse Greenberg, 51 points

Congratulations to all!

SPRING AWAY

This coming spring, five of our majors are studying abroad. Dan Allen is going to the Universitas Castellae in Valladolid, Spain; Evan Barnes is studying at Sophia University in Tokyo; Samantha Markey is attending University College Cork in Ireland; and Jacob Norton and Dan Schroeder will participate in the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics Program. Congratulations to each of you on being accepted into these programs, and we wish you all an educational and exciting semester!

Macalester Math and Computer Science students shine in weekend competitions:

Congratulations to the following students who presented the results of their research work with faculty at the Undergraduate Research Symposium of the Pew Midstates Math and Science Consortium, held at the University of Chicago this year.

Oral Presentations:
Daniel Feldman
Nyalleng Moorosi
Kassahun Haileyesus

Posters:
Thamsanqa Khumalo
Daniel Bell
Tyson Vervoort
Kara Manke
Susan Brown
Thanaw Myint

The students presented their work along with other students from other colleges. Professor Libby Shoop attended the meeting with the students and was impressed at the high quality of all of the students' posters and oral presentations.

Pi Mu Epsilon

A student chapter of Pi Mu Epsilon maintains a lively academic and social program directed to the interests of Mathematics majors. Activities include lectures, discussions, and fall and spring picnics. Officers for 2006-07 are:

President: Viet Hoang

Vice-President: Murat Ilgen

Secretary/Treasurer: Elad Rachevsky

The following students were inducted into Pi Mu Epsilon, the mathematics honorary society,

on April 26, 2006:

Owen Anderson, Katherine Ayer, Kyle Braam, Methawat Chanla, Christopher Dragga, Ozkan Erguden, Cem Ernaz, Ian Goldstein, Aaron Heerboth, Jonas Hiltrop, Viet Hoang, Murat Ilgen, Tobin Kaufman-Osborn, Marija Krgovic, Katherine Lim, Andi Luka, Scott Macdonell, Thanzaw Myint, Brendan Pierpont, Elad Rachevsky, Jeffrey Rogers, Francie Streich, and Linh To.

Pi Mu Epsilon Society

ACM Student Chapter

The Department of Mathematics and Computer Science has a student chapter of the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM), the professional society of computer science. Membership is open to all students, and there are regular monthly meetings which address a range of technical and professional issues. The chapter invites local and national speakers on topics of interest to computer science students. It also sponsors workshops, career nights, and social events. The student chapter of the ACM is an excellent way to meet your fellow computer science students in an informal social setting.

Students on the planning committee this year are Owen Anderson, David Brown, Mauricio Gomez Diaz, Shathel Haddad, and Stiliyana Stamenova.

Upsilon Pi Epsilon

In addition to the student ACM chapter, which is open to all students, the Computer Science program supports a local chapter of Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE), the international honor society for computer science. Students who maintain a high academic standing will be invited to join UPE, most often in their junior or senior year.

The following students were inducted into Upsilon Pi Epsilon, the computer science honorary society,

on April 26, 2006:

Evan Barnes, Matt Klaber, Leah Kluegel, Lars T. Johnson, Megan Thieme, Paul Norman, and Leo Walton.

Upsilon Pi Epsilon Society

Women in Science and Mathematics

This is a student organization for women interested in majoring in the physical sciences, natural sciences, mathematics, and computer science. It sponsors educational programs, talks, and social events, and currently includes more than 30 female students.

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Two Macalester teams recently took part in the North Central Regional Programming Contest. We participated at the Carleton site, directly competing against teams from Carleton, Gustavus, and Luther College. At sites across the region, nearly 200 teams participated!

Both Mac teams performed extremely well! The Macalester Omegas (Eric Chan-Tin, Nicky Dinev, and Dang Vang) won the Carleton site, and placed 7th in the region overall. They solved 5 out of 9 problems, and were the only team to solve Problem 9. The Macalester Alphas (Owen Anderson, David Brown, and Stella Stamenova) placed 4th at the Carleton site, and 37th in the region overall, solving 3 problems (and almost a fourth).

The standings are posted on the bulletin board outside of Prof. Fox's office.

Congratulate our teams!