Women of Modern Mathematics

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Adriana Salerno

A few weeks ago, IBM premiered their new iPad app, The Minds of Modern Mathematics. This is an interactive timeline spanning from 1000 to 1950, with bios of famous mathematicians and their important results. Many of you have seen a poster version of this in your respective math department, although the poster version (at least the original one) was called The Men of Modern Mathematics. The poster is even included with the app. In this post, I will write a little about what I like and don’t like about this app. Continue reading →

Posted in iPad apps, women in math | 5 Comments

Attracting more students to the math major – with shiny objects

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Adriana Salerno

The math major is not always the most popular one, especially at small liberal arts school like mine (there are some exceptions, of course). There are many people out there who think about how to attract more students to the major and how to retain them. Among the successful ones, I count Michael Dorff, from Brigham Young University, as one of the pioneers. I took a short course from him in the 2011 Joint Math Meetings, and there were a lot of suggestions that I thought were excellent. My favorite: create a sense of community. In this post, I will focus on how to achieve this by giving students stuff. Continue reading →

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Five (math) things to do before you die

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Adriana Salerno

An interesting question was posed to me recently. If you were told you were going to die tomorrow, which 5 math topics/questions would you be most sad you never got to learn about/have answered? First of all, I must admit I freeze any time people ask me to rank my top five anything. It feels so final, and I really want to think about it carefully before I answer. Also, honestly, if I were told I had 24 hours to live I would be sad and upset but probably not about the math I was going to miss. But that is not the point of the question, I guess. In this post I will attempt to answer this question, with full awareness that I may change my mind in a few days. But I will also pose a few other questions and then leave it to you, my readers, to ponder them. Continue reading →

Posted in math problems | 6 Comments