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California Mathematics Council Community Colleges

California Mathematics Council Community Colleges

California Mathematics Council Community Colleges

Spring 2012 Conference at Lake Tahoe, Apr 26-27

The 16th Annual Spring Conference was held in Stateline, NV on April 26-27, 2012 at the MontBleu Hotel and Spa.

Friday Keynote Speaker: Shirley Gray, Mathematics Professor CSU Los Angeles
Mathematics – A Tie that Binds Sources that Unite our Community

Too often students view the pre-internet world as one of individual struggle and isolated, solitary work, with little communication and connection among mathematicians, particularly across international borders. But this is perhaps surprisingly not the case. European mathematicians in the 17th and 18th centuries did not work in isolation; rather they worked in collaboration and sometimes in competition with their counterparts across the continent. Moreover, they were often not thought of as being "genius" or even young by their contemporaries. Just as today, it was a competitive world; everyone wanted to garner the recognition that came with being the first with a particular result. But this only fueled the need for collaboration and the sharing of ideas, through written communication, both personal and in professional journals, personal visits and travel, and presentations at professional society meetings. Mathematics is a social endeavor that progresses by collaborations in non-linear fashion. As Newton wrote, in a letter to his rival Robert Hooke, in 1676: "If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

Saturday Keynote Speaker: Robert Mathews, Department of Music Yuba College
The Well-Tempered Fraction: A Look At How Music And Math Intersect In Everyday Life.

A very hip and lively talk on mathematics and music connections The places where music and math intersect are so numerous that we encounter them everyday, often without even knowing it. They’re found not only in the ponderous areas of the inner mind, where we could imagine what a musical fraction might sound like, but also in innocuous locations, as common as the dentist’s office. Either way, music and math provide a nearly infinite amount of ways to see something familiar in a new light.

Saturday Student Speaker: Jesse Cohen Santa Rosa Junior College
Algebra: A Student’s Exploration of Space and Structure

Henri Poincare said "The mathematician does not study pure mathematics because it is simply useful; he studies it because he delights in it and he delights in it because it is beautiful." In this talk will be presented the results from and experience of a community college student's participation in an independent research project in mathematics

Schedule of the Saturday Concurrent Sessions

Presentations provided can be found below.

Room/Session Session 1
9:00 am - 10:00 am
Session 2
10:30 am - 11:30 am
Session 3
2:30 pm - 3:30 pm
Session 4
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Metro A
Pythagorean Triples
Mark Harbison
Presentation
If There's No Solution It's Not a Problem
Steve Blasberg
Kepler: Family Witchcraft, Misery on Earth, and Discovering Alien Worlds with 17th Century Mathematics
Laura Sparks
Beginning Game Theory Using Battle of the Sexes, Prisoner's Dilemna, and MAD
Janet Tarjan
Metro B
Graph Theory How to be Colorful and Make Friends
Peter Avery
Bankroll Management for Bets With Positive Expected Value
Tom Grube
No Session
No Session
Metro C
Geocaching: Using Multi-Billion Dollar Technology (and Math) to Find Tupperware in the Woods
Bruce Armbrust
Presentation
Global Warming in the US ... the Proof in Numbers
Stephen Eurgubian
If Circles Were Squares
Donald Pfaff
Live in the Cloud, and the Force of Math Will Be With You
Pavel Solin

Future CMC3 Conferences

Information about future conferences is available. For conference information, contact the Conference Chair. For registration information contact the Membership Chair