Math Awareness Month at UNO

The Mathematics Awareness Month, held in April each year, has recently been expanded from Mathematics Awareness Week. Its goal is to increase public understanding of and appreciation for mathematics. It began in 1986 with a proclamation by President Ronald Reagan, who said in part:

Despite the increasing importance of mathematics to the progress of our economy and society, enrollment in mathematics programs has been declining at all levels of the American educational system. Yet the application of mathematics is indispensable in such diverse fields as medicine, computer sciences, space exploration, the skilled trades, business, defense, and government. To help encourage the study and utilization of mathematics, it is appropriate that all Americans be reminded of the importance of this basic branch of science to our daily lives.

In the first year, Mathematics Awareness activities concentrated on national-level events, such as opening an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution on mathematics and hosting a Capitol Hill reception. Since that time the focus has shifted to activities at the local, state, and regional levels. Over the years, the general purpose has consistently been to increase the visibility of mathematics as a field of study and to communicate the power and intrigue in mathematics to a larger audience.

Activities for Mathematics Awareness Month are generally organized by college and university departments, institutional public information offices, student groups, and related associations and interest groups. They have included a wide variety of workshops, competitions, exhibits, festivals, lectures, and symposia.

Each year, numerous proclamations for Mathematics Awareness Month are issued by elected officials, frequently in connection with special meetings and events arranged to observe the week/month. Media coverage has been consistent and positive.

Each year a national theme is selected and theme materials are developed and distributed. The theme for the year 2000 was Math spans all dimensions. For 2001 the theme will be Mathematics of the ocean.

This year the participating institutions have been:

• Altoona College of Penn State - Altoona, PA ;
• Arizona State University - Tempe, AZ;
• College of the Desert - Palm Desert, CA;
• Daemen College - Buffalo, NY;
• Dillard University-Department of Mathematics and Student Support Services - New Orleans, LA;
• Lambrick Park Secondary - Victoria, British Columbia;
• Millersville University of Pennsylvania - Millersville, PA;
• Morehead State University - Morehead, KY;
• Mrs. Glosser's Math Goodies, Inc. - Ossining, NY;
• Nassau Community College - Garden City, NY;
• North Carolina A&T State University - Greensboro, NC;
• Pellissippi State Technical Community College - Knoxville, TN;
• Rhode Island College - Providence, RI;
• Trinity University - San Antonio, TX;
• University of Kansas, Department of Mathematics - Lawrence, KS;
• University of Mary Hardin-Baylor - Belton, TX;
• University of Nebraska at Omaha - Omaha, NE;
• University of Scranton - Scranton, PA;
• University of South Dakota - Vermillion, SD;
• University of Utah - Salt Lake City, UT;
• University of Wisconsin-Whitewater - Whitewater, WI

UNO joined MAM for the first time this year organizing an informal conference The Mathematics Symposium: Math Awareness Month at UNO where faculty and students both graduate and undergraduate gave talks on various topics of mathematical interest. The list of titles and speakers was:

Morning Session:

1.

Margaret Gessaman, Chair, Department of Mathematics, UNO, Welcome to the Math Awareness Month at UNO,

2.

Elliott Ostler, UNO, The Origins of Counting,

3.

Lydia Thompson and Richard Longman, Grace University and UNO, Continuity Versus Differentiability and Weierstrass's ``Monster'',

4.

Griff Elder, UNO, Prime Gaps & Clusters,

5.

Jim Rogers, Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Use of Artificial Neural Networks to Classify Nonlinearly Separable Input Patterns,

6.

Brent Larson, Angela O'Conor, Jodi Phillipi, Central High School, Westside Middle School, and Tara Heights Elementary, A Probability Analysis of Lottery Numbers for Secondary Level Students.

Afternoon Session:

1.

Neal Grandgenett, UNO, Exploring Geometry through Paper Circle Folding,

2.

Andrew Buchan, UNO, Zeno's Paradoxes, Philosophical Discussions, Mathematics, and More,

3.

Andrzej Roslanowski, UNO, True, False, or $\ldots$,

4.

Annette Hamilton, Chad Fulk, Iowa Western Community College and UNO, Calculus, Simple Irrationalities, and More,

5.

Greg Sand, Omaha Public Schools, Euler was on to something!,

6.

Valentin Matache, UNO, Using the Elliptic-Range Theorem to Span All Dimensions.

A web-page of the events was organized at http://www.unomaha.edu/~vmatache/mam.html which contains abstracts of the talks.

Besides the symposium the MAM at UNO presented Dr. Judy Roitman, from The University of Kansas who gave a distinguished lecture entitled A Survey of the S and L Space Problem.

The participants to the symposium were mainly UNO students and faculty. The media coverage was practically reduced to an e-notes ad. Based on response from students and faculty the idea that UNO should consider reorganizing this kind of event in the future seems beneficial. Involving high schoolers, adding problem solving contests for them and UNO students to mathematical expository events, advertising more broadly and timely are issues to be considered.

Dr. Valentin Matache