Category: department news

Eric A. Barnitt (Mayo Clinic, Gustavus ’07) 11:30-12:20 on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 Olin Hall, Room 321 Lunch will be served The field of medical research is one that is vast and growing. Researchers are pushing to find new ways to understand complex medical questions in virtually every field of medicine. My talk addresses how…

Mathematics Awareness Month Lecture by Francis Edward Su (Harvey Mudd College) 7:00 PM, May 1st, 2008 Olin Hall, Room 103 When can a majority of voters find common ground, that is, a position they all agree upon? How does the shape of the political spectrum influence the outcome? What does mathematics have to say about how people…

Congratulations to the team of Erick Knight, Mark Myers, and Chenyu Yang for winning the 2008 Konhauser Problemfest!  Professor Rietz reports that the team score was 99  out of 100;  the next highest score was 90.  As a result, the unique traveling trophy associated with this math contest is now lodged at Gustavus; it is…

Jon Christianson, Jon Knutzen, Adam Miron ’07, and Allison Rethwisch ’07 all of Collins (John B. Collins Associates, Inc.) 11:30-12:20 on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 Olin Hall, Room 317 Lunch will be served Catastrophe modeling estimates the financial impacts of disasters – whether of natural or human origin – by simulating scenarios based on historical data…

A team of Gustavus students took 1st place out of the 53 teams competing in the mathematics contest sponsored by the North Central Section of the Mathematics Association of America.  Gustavus’s “Team Erick,” consisting of Erick Knight, Sarah Cowles, and Andy Scott, earned a higher score than any of the other 52 teams in the…

Erik Tou, Carthage College (and Gustavus alumnus) 11:30-12:20 on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 Olin Hall, Room 320 Lunch will be served Leonhard Euler was the most prolific mathematician of the 18th century. He wrote over 800 books and papers during his career, many of which were published long after his death. While much of Euler’s…

Eric S. Weber, Iowa State University (and Gustavus alumnus) 3:30-4:20pm on Tuesday, October 30 Olin Hall, Room 320 The Uncertainty Principle is a well-known phenomenon from physics, placing a lower bound on the error present in simultaneous measurements of position and momentum of a particle. However, it actually is a mathematical phenomenon, and we will…

Aaron Rendahl, University of Minnesota School of Statistics 11:30-12:20 on Wednesday, November 14, 2007 Olin Hall, Room 320 Lunch will be served The likelihood ratio test is an important statistical method for comparing two competing hypotheses. While it is the theoretical justification for many standard statistical tests, it can also be useful for problems where…

Mike Hvidsten and Tom Huber from the MCS and Phsyics Departments just got a very nice grant from Sun Microsystems that will allow the two of them to modernize the Robotics Workshop course, which they will be team teaching in January of 2008. Sun is providing 11 SunSPOT development systems, valued at a total of…

Nathan Annis Thursday, October 11th, 3:30-4:20pm Olin Hall, Room 321 What is Operations Research? What does someone educated in this field actually do? Nathan Annis, a 2003 graduate of Gustavus, later earned a graduate degree in Operations Research and is now employed at Hormel Foods. He will present real-world examples applying the tools of optimization,…