Weekly Reader

Calendar

Up-to-date information is posted in the Mathematics extended calendar. If you have information to put on the calendar, please contact Sue Ellen.

Week of October 22, 2007

 

Software remediation program Wednesday, October 24

Eric Gates of McGraw Hill will be here to demonstrate a software remediation program for students in Calculus I. This product has been used at Univ. of Illinois Urbana and at Northwestern, evidently with positive results. It is designed to be used for the first couple of weeks of class so students can shore up weak areas in their preparation. 305 Carver Hall; 1:00 to 2:00 p.m.

New departmental positions

Descriptions for new assistant professor and associate/full professor are posted on the deparment web site.

Updating hall directories

During the next couple of weeks, the photo directories on 3rd and 4th floors will be removed to allow current images to be posted.

Deadlines

• October 22 submissions for Congressional Funding Requests due in the Mathematics Department office by 5:00 p.m.

 

Keeping us in stitches

Quilt blocks submitted by Ellen Olson, departmental secretary, and Ina Pour-El, spouse of Paul Sacks, in the State Fair's ISU Sesquicentennial quilt block contest were selected for inclusion in the quilt.

Olson incorporated images (at left) of the campanile, a four-leaf clover (4-H symbol) and a butterfly in her block. As a youth, she was a member of 4-H, a young people's program bringing new ideas into the community which orginated at Iowa State University. The butterfly, also Olson's personal symbol, embodies the butterfly garden.

Pour-El created her own pattern (shown at right) using the four fabrics provided, and stitched "ISU" following a tatted alphabet originally designed by internationally reknowned tatter Mary Sue Kuhn. Kuhn reintroduced the the lost technique of split ring tatting. utilized split-ring tatted letters to spell out "ISU."

Assembled by Karen Gilson of Prairie City (the great niece of Iowa State's oldest living graduate, Clara Roberts), the quilt was on display at the fair prior to being put on the State Fair auction. The $5,000 it raised was donated to the fair for facilities improvements. See the full quilt

 

Colloquium this week

Tuesday 4:10 p.m. Carver 150
Alexander Kurganov, Tulane University
Non-oscillatory central schemes: A powerful black-box solver for hyperbolic PDEs

Seminar topics this week

Combinatorics, Algebra, Number Theory Seminar
Monday 4:10 p.m. Carver 290
Richard Kramer on "Consequences of the product rule for derivations (concluded) "

Computational and Applied Mathematics
Monday 4:10 p.m. Carver 294
Jaemin Shin on "Inverse scattering transformation and Landau-Lifschitz equation "

Discrete Mathematics
Tuesday 2:10 p.m. Carver 074
Olga Pryporova on "Qualitative convergence of matrices "

Probability
Wednesday 12:10 p.m. Carver 232


Hypergeometric Series
Wednesday 2:10 p.m. Carver 232
Chris Kurth on "Hypergeometric series and the hyperbolic disc"

Graduate Student Seminar NO MEETING THIS WEEK
Wednesday 4:10 p.m. Carver 290

Analysis
Thursday 3:10 p.m. Carver 204
Erik Weber on "The Kadison-Singer problem, Part I "