CHASE REPORT

NEWSLETTER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS AND STATISTICS

 

MAY 2002

DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY, HALIFAX, N.S.


 

AWARDS WINNERS

Sir William Young Gold Medal in Math

James Michael

Ralph & Frances Lewis Jeffery Scholarship

James Michael

Michael Lejeune

Barry Ward Fawcett Memorial Prize

Sarah McCurdy

Ken Dunn Memorial Prize

Adam Clay

Katherine M. Buttenshaw Prize

John Klapstein

Bernoulli Prize

Joshua Knauer

Waverly Prize

Deepti Limaye

Emil and Stella Blum Award in Mathematics

Jana Archibald

Ellen McCaughin McFarlane Prize

Hannah McKenzie


KILLAM AWARD WINNERS

Mathematics:

Richard Hoshino

Tara Taylor

Jin Yue

Statistics:

Connie Stewart


NSERC AWARD WINNERS

NSERC PGS-A awards: Richard Hoshino

James Michael

NSERC PDF: Reza Yahaghi

 


GRADUATING HONOURS STUDENTS

Honours - Mathematics

Jamie Carter Honours

Michael Lejeune Honours

James Michael First Class Honours

Congratulations to Chris Michael & John Klapstein who won the APICS Math. Competition in October 2001, at St. Francis Xavier University.

 


GRADUATE STUDENTS

Recent Graduates:

October 2001 Convocation:

Mathematics Statistics

Carl Hickman, PhD Xiaofei Shi, M.Sc.

Troy Ashby, M.Sc. Bo Lin, M.Sc.

Dan Kehler, M.Sc.

May 2002 Convocation:

Mathematics Statistics

Dale Garraway, PhD Mei Yang, M.Sc.

Rami Filfil, M.Sc.

Mark MacIsaac, M.Sc.

 


UNDERGRADUATE SUMMER RESEARCH STUDENTS

NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Awards:

Adam Clay (supervisor Keith Johnson)

Ehab Eshtaya (supervisor: Ray Spiteri)

Paul Sheridan (supervisor: Keith Johnson)

John Richard Freeman Warr Undergraduate Student Research Award:

Jesse Rusak (supervisor Ray Spiteri)

Faculty Summer Research Students:

Irina Hole (Jeannette Janssen)

Sara Cole (Ray Spiteri)

Michael Greene (Andrea Fraser)

Joel Patterson, St.Mary's (Pat Keast & Paul Muir)

John Klapstein (Keith Johnson)

Katie Gardner, Acadia (John Clements)

 


ROSEMARY GILL AWARD

Gretchen Smith has been awarded the 2002 Rosemary Gill award. The late Rosemary Gill was a popular doctor who served as Director of University Health Services. The award bearing her name honours employees who make an exceptional non- teaching contribution to the life of students, faculty and staff. It celebrates people who exemplify Rosemary Gill's generous spirit.

 


ALUMNI NEWS

Professor Kori Inkpen (class of '92) left Simon Fraser University to take up a faculty position in the Faculty of Computing Science at Dalhousie this year.

Stacey Scott (class of '97) followed her supervisor (Kori Inkpen) to work on her Ph.D. degree in C.S. here at Dalhousie.

Annik Martin, (MSc. 1999), who did her Master degree under the supervision of Professor S. Ruan, has an instru ctor position at Idaho State University, USA.

Dale Garraway (PhD. 2002) has been teaching at Colby College, Maine for the past academic year.

Rebecca Culshaw (PhD. 2002) has accepted a position at Clarke College, Dubuque, Iowa for the coming year.

Patricia Moorhead (PhD. 2002) will be taking a position at Department of National Defence, Ottawa this October.

Rolf Jeltsch was a PDF at Dalhousie with Professor Hermann Brunner, now at ETH in Zurich. He has been President of the European Mathematica l Society 1999-2002.

Sung Je Cho (PhD. 1978) is Professor of Mathematics Education at the Seoul National University in Korea. He chaired the organizing committee for the International Mathematics Olympiad IMO 20 00, which took place in Seoul. Currently he is working on problems in ma th education in Korea.

Josh Knauer is spending the summer at Simon Fraser University, working with Professor Peter Borwein. He will be back in September for his final year.

In February we had a surprise visit by Songping Zhou, who received his PhD. here in 1992 under Professor Peter Borwein. He is now Dean of the newly established Faculty of Science at Ningbo University in China.

 

Random Thoughts of A Recent StatCan Recruit

When people think of Statistics Canada, they think of the unemployment rate, the inflation rate and the census. But what's it like on the "inside"? In particular, what's it like for someone with a statistics degree, fresh out of university, when he leaves academia for what StatCan old timers still refer to affectionately as the Bureau?

I have worked a t Statistics Canada for little over a year and although it might be argue d that I haven’t been here long enough to have a really informed opi nion, I do believe that this is a great place to work. Sure, the pay may not be as good as if I was in a private company in the United States but the environment at Statistics Canada has a lot to offer.

To begin, let m e say that I work on the International Travel Survey in the Education, Cu lture and Tourism Section of the Household Survey Methods Division in the Methodology Branch of Statistics Canada. The fact that this sort of hier archy exists is, in fact, very beneficial to new employees as it allows t hem to work with more experienced statisticians who will aid in their dev elopment. Most people with statistics degrees work in one of the three me thodology divisions, and are therefore known as methodologists. Within St atistics Canada, the term statistician is often used to refer to s ubject-matter experts, who typically have degrees in economics and not in statistics!

The work of met hodologists is highly varied and covers many areas including survey desig n, sample allocation, weighting, variance estimation and almost every oth er aspect of survey sampling. Methodologists generally work as part of a multidisciplinary team, working with subject matter specialists and syst ems specialists. Because the job of a methodologist is so varied, it is a lmost impossible to provide a simple summary of what we do here at Statis tics Canada.

Statistics Canada has been hir ing a lot of new recruits in recent years and accordingly has developed c ommittees and events to make the transition to work easier. Each methodol ogy division has its own welcoming committee to greet newcomers and to sh ow them the ropes. There are also special seminars for new methodologists and many social events, which allow new employees to meet each other and develop friendships. There is also an Inter-Program Recruit Committee th at organizes monthly events for new recruits from all disciplines. This a llows you to meet people in other disciplines as well as other methodolog ists.

All of these or ganized events are above and beyond the usual ways you make friends, such as eating in the cafeteria, going to the gym at lunch and meeting people on your floor. Statistics Canada has a relatively informal working envir onment that makes it easy to talk to your co-workers and supervisors.

Statistics Cana da places great emphasis on training new employees with courses available on practically every subject that you may use over the course of your ca reer. As a recent graduate, it feels good to have my employer paying to e ducate me rather than me paying to get an education so I can be employed. One course that I particularly enjoyed is the Survey Skills Development Course. During this six-week course, the participants are responsible for almost every aspect of a real survey, from sample design to data collect ion to the dissemination of results. This allows you to see every part of a survey from start to finish and provides exposure to many areas of sur vey sampling.

Since Statistic s Canada is an agency of the federal government, the work environment is bilingual. Senior methodologists (and anyone else with supervisory respon sibilities) are expected to be bilingual so that work can be done in eith er official language. Statistics Canada has language training facilities on site, which makes it easy to take classes in your second language. Sin ce the French (or English) classes can be taken, at least in part, during working hours, the fact that you are expected to become bilingual is les s of an impediment to career advancement than I feared it would be. To b e honest, the language classes often provide a nice break from your regul ar working day!

Having worked f or just over a year has given me the opportunity to look back on my unive rsity career and try to assess how well my education in statistics has pr epared me for the real world (or at least my part of it). I obtained a Ma ster’s degree in Statistics at Dalhousie University (a great school! ) and I really do believe that I developed a good understanding of the fu ndamentals of statistics and at least a basic understanding of the more c omplex statistical methods. My university training has left me with two t hings that I think are essential to being a good statistician: a broad en ough knowledge base to know what methodology should be used and the mathe matical and technical ability to use the methodology once I have examined it. I no longer remember all the formulas and the exact techniques behin d logistic regression, time series analysis, survival analysis, etc., but I have a good idea of when they should be used and what they can do. Mor e importantly, if you give me a couple of hours with one of my textbooks I will be able to use these methods on a basic level.

Having said wha t my education has done for me, I should also mention what I think a univ ersity education leaves out that is also essential to being a good statis tician: knowledge of how to deal with "real-world" problems. Ba sed on discussions I've had with other recent StatCan recruits, this seem s to be a Canada-wide phenomenon. In university, almost all problems bega n with the words "Suppose you have a random sample of X" or som ething along those lines, with little discussion of how the sample was ob tained. When I left university I had a good idea of what was not a random sample, but not a good idea of how to get a sample that was suffi ciently representative. I knew why selecting every fifth person walking d own a street is not a good random sample, but I didn’t know how to g et a random sample of people in a city when there were all the "real -world" problems to deal with. As for non-response and how to deal w ith it, it was rarely mentioned.

This lack of exposure to real- world problems did ensure that my first few weeks at work were interestin g, as I learned about imputation, got an idea of the sheer complexity of a large survey and generally began to learn how things worked outside of the classroom setting. I think it would be beneficial for students if the university arranged to have practicing statisticians do a presentation o n some of the problems they encountered and how they were dealt with, wit h an emphasis on the practical side. This will have at least as much bene fit for future statisticians as a seminar on someone’s new method to estimate the kurtosis of a non-normal distribution, which may only be of interest to a few specialists.

Statistics Canada is a great place to work for people with an interest in statistics. With the diversity of subject-matter areas covered by Statistics Canada, there ar e always opportunities for growth and change within the agency. Statistic s Canada is one of the largest employers of statisticians in the world an d the most highly respected government statistical agency, bar none. Wher e better to work if you want a career in statistics?

Martin Perry, Statistic s Canada

Graduated October 2000 (M.Sc. Dal)

Reprinted from Liaison Vol. 16, No.2

May 2002


FACULTY NEWS

It is a cliché to remark on how quick ly the years roll by. Yet, that seems to be the only response when faced with surprising anniversaries. This summer marks the twentieth anniversa ry of Michael Edelstein's retirement from the department. Michael came to Halifax and Dalhousie in 1964. He made a huge contribution to the life of the department and especially to its research life. He supervis ed the first Ph.D. in Math at Dal (Raymond Holmes) and many others subseq uently. He ran the functional analysis seminar but, more importantly, was always suggesting problems to students and faculty alike.

To mark his bir thday earlier this year many former students and colleagues were asked to send him greetings. A largish package was put together and was received with much appreciation.

Michael is now living in Vancouver close to his daughter, Leah. We wish them both well.

 

* * * * * * *

Congratulations to Jason Brown who has been promoted to Full Professor effectiv e July 1, 2002.

Congratulations to Richard Nowakowski who has accepted a further four-year term as Department Chair.

Shigui Ruan will be on Leave of Absence from Dalhousie University starting July 1, 2002. Dr. Ruan will be at the University of Miami during this time.

Congratulations to Rob Milson on his reappoin tment as Assistant Professor.

Congratulations to Hong Gu on her appointment as Assistant Professor.

Shigui Ruan had a fruitful sabbatical year at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. He not only enjoyed the music and weather there but also had been invit ed to give colloquium/seminar talks at more than 10 universities includin g Georgia Tech, NC State, UT-San Antonio, Univ of Miami, Arizona State, B righam Young (one doesn't need to be a Mormon to give a talk there), Vand erbilt, Auburn, UA-Huntsville, UT-Knoxville, Memphis, etc.

In November, an afternoon-confere nce in number theory took place in our department. The following 7 speak ers talked about their latest research:

Peter Borwein (Simon Fraser)

Karl Dilcher (Dalhousie)

Ron Ferguson (Simon Fraser)

Jeff Hooper (Acadia)

Josh Knauer (Dalhousie)

Joerg Richstein (Dalhousie)

Ping Zhou (St.F.X.)

Joerg Richstein after successful completion of a Killam PDF for two years has returned to the University of Giessen in Germany.

We're happy to welcome back Heydar Radjavi after spending two years at the University of New Hampshire.

Tony (A.C. Thompson) retired ... and is now President of the Nova Scotia Lighthouse Preservation Society.

It may not be widely known that the website of the international "Fibonacci Association" is maintained in this department (by Karl Dilcher); this includes the conference website of the upcomi ng International Conference on Fibonacci Numbers and Applications, June 2 4 - 28, in Flagstaff, Arizona. (See http://www.mathstat.dal.ca/fibonacci /).

Richard Nowakowski (RJN) was busy analyzing games this last year.

RJN and Erik D emaine (BSc Dal 1995, Univ of Waterloo, now Assistant Professor at MIT) together with R. Fleisch er (HKUST, Hong Kong) and A. Fraenkel (Weizmann I nstitute of Science, Israel), organized a Worksh op at Dagstuhl, Germany on Algorithmic Combinatorial Game Theory for Feb 17 to Feb. 22, 2002. 45 people took part from Europe and North America. See http://www.dagstuhl.de/02081/ f or a description and http://www.dagstuhl.de/Seminars/Photographs/020 81.s.jpg for a photo of the participants.

More Games o f No Chance, Cambridge University Press (2002), edited by R. Nowakow ski, (also on combinatorial games) was published this year.

RJN also organi zed "Games At Dal" in August 2001. This consisted of a workshop (M. Albe rt, Univ. of Otago, New Zealand, J. P. Grossman, MIT, D. Horrocks, UPEI, and RJN) and a day long conference which had a mix of talks by the works hop participants and undergraduate students from the maritimes. The game of "Clobber" was invented at this workshop. This game became a big hit at the Dagstuhl workshop. See http://lunen.gac.edu/~wolfe/games/clobber/ fo r the rules.

RJN is busy org anizing "Games at Dal II" for August 2002 which will follow the same form at. The Workshop participants will be M. Albert, Univ. of Otago, New Ze aland, E. Demaine, MIT, J.P. Grossman, MIT, D. Horrocks, UPEI, D. Wolfe, Gustavus Adolphus Coll. and RJN.

In February 2002 Keith Thompson was awarded a Canada Research Chair in Marine Prediction and Environmental Statistics. Keith Thompson will use his expertise in physically-based modelling and applied statistics to look at a number of environmental problems. He is presently developing forecast models for the deep ocean and shelf seas an d using them, for example, to assess how flooding risk will change as glo bal sea level continues to rise over he next century and storminess chan ges. An exciting aspect of the chair is the establishment of a new group in environmental statistics. In addition to adding two new junior facul ty to our department, this initiative will provide opportunities for grad uate students to work at the interface of statistics and a number of othe r disciplines including atmospheric science, oceanography and environment al science.

Many professors and others with Dalhousie connection s will be presenting talks at the CMS Summer Meetings in Quebec, June 200 2.

The following current Dalhousie professors appear as active participants on the poster for the meetings.

Andrea Fraser

Bob Paré

Dorette Pronk

Jeanette Janssen

Karl Dilcher

Shigui Ruan

Richard J. Wood

The following p rofessors with Dalhousie Mathematics Department connections are also list ed on the same poster.

Robert Dawson, for mer undergraduate (B.Sc.)

Dale Garraway, Ph.D.

Fred Linton, former Killam Senior Fellow

Wendy MacCaull, former undergraduate (B.S c.)

Susan Niefield, former Post Doctoral Fell ow

Bob Raphael, former faculty

Phil Scott, former faculty

David Bradley, former Post Doctoral Fello w

Colin Ingalls, former undergraduate (B.Sc =2E)

Leah Edelstein (B.Sc. Dal) has been chosen to give the prestigious CMS Krieger-Ne lson Lecture at the CMS Summer Meeting for 2003.

 

 

Sabbatical Leave

The following professors will be on sabbatical leave during the following terms mentioned:

Jason Brown July 1, 2002 - December 3 1, 2002

C.C.A. Sastri July 1, 2002 - June 30, 2003

Keith Johnson July 1, 2002 - June 30, 2003

Chris Field July 1, 2002 - June 30, 2 003

Alan Coley January 1, 2003 - June 30, 2003

 


COMPETITION NEWS

In early December the Putnam Exam was written by seven of our students, this year jointly (but as separate teams) with students from St. Mary's.

Our top contestants were John Klapstein, James Michael, and Adam Clay, who ranked in the upper 20 -30% of the almost 3000 students who wrote the exam throughout Canada and the U.S. Weekly problem sessions had been held in the Fall, led by RIchard Hoshino and Karl Dilcher.

 


Graduate Student Society News

GRAD Events 2001/2002

The Math/Stat Graduate Student Society had another year of successful social activities. The weekly department coffee hour was as popular as ever. This year we made the running of coffee hour a communal effort, soliciting volunteers each week. Many thanks to the people who donated their time to put the coffee on or pick up the munchies on their way to work.

Our social calendar of this past year also included four main events. Thanksgiving was celebrated with a delicious international cuisine potluck dinner. The annual Christmas party was held in the Chase Building this year and was a great success. In mid-February, we honoured the Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day, Shrove Tuesday and Flag Day with an all-in-one pizza party. In early April we hosted a post-Easter part y with a special Mad Hatter theme. Our lucky winners in the mad hat contest were Jean Thiébaux, John Metlej and Steve Larocque. There were many honourable mentions; thanks to all those who participated in the fun.

It has been an honour representing graduate student interests in this department this past year and the current executive wis hes everyone a pleasant and enjoyable summer.

 

Nancy Clarke, President

Tara Taylor, Vice-President

Patricia Moorhead, Treasurer/Secretary

Richard Hoshino, Department Liason

 


Undergraduate Student Society News

MASS Events 2001/2002

2001/2002 was a nother successful year for the Undergraduate Math and Stats Society. All of the events put on by MASS were well attended and we achieved our goal of bringing undergraduate math and stats students together.

We kicked thing s off in September with the first of many Aftermaths. This year the semi- regular Friday afternoon casual meetings were very popular with both stud ents and faculty. Also in September MASS had its first outdoor BBQ. We i ncreased awareness of our society and its events by selling hamburgers an d hotdogs to passersby outside the Chase building.

Our hard work p aid off with the September pub-crawl that was the most successful in the history of MASS. More than 70 undergraduate and graduate students went o ut together on a tour of Halifax's downtown bars. For the second pub-craw l in February, MASS teamed up with the Computer Science Undergraduate Soc iety to hold an even larger event. A highlight of the evening was the coi ncidence of the Math/Stats/CS, Mechanical/Civil Engineering and Psycholog y pub-crawls at the T-Room. Everyone had a good time. A highlight of Nov ember was our Games Night. Dr. Nowakowski taught us to play Dots-a nd-Boxes while everyone enjoyed free pizza. Hopefully we will be able to GO to more next year.

Our annual Holi day Dinner was held at the Great Wall restaurant on Bedford Row in downto wn Halifax. The food was excellent and plentiful. There was a good mix of students and faculty, with enjoyable conversations ensuing.

Everyone's favo rite event was the Wine and Cheese evenings held in November and April. The colloquium room was transformed into an intimate and elegant soiree w ith tasteful decorations. The party helped students and faculty to enjoy an excellent evening of mingling. During the second Wine and Cheese in April, MASS gave out its 2nd annual Motivator of the Year awar d. This year's deserving recipient was Dr. Karl Dilcher. In addi tion to a new mason jar of pencils, Dr. Dilcher received a plaque with th e following inscription:

 

The 2001-2002 M.A.S.S. Award for Motivation

is presented with appreciation to

Karl Dilcher

for his contribution to undergraduate achiev ement. The undergraduates wish to thank Dr. Dilcher for his hard work in organizing the problem solving training sessions, and for introducing Cr yptography to the curriculum this year. In addition to challenging his s tudents, Dr. Dilcher teaches each course with his unique sense of humor, which has helped to make him a very likeable and well-respected lecturer. Dr. Dilcher's enthusiasm and willingness to invest a great deal of effo rt encourages his students to do the same.

The year ended with MASS' annual general meeting. W e all came together to thank this years excellent council: James Micha el (President), Paul Sheridan (Vice-President), Johnny Metl ej (Treasurer) and Jamie Carter (Secretary). We also e lected our (mostly) new executive for 2002-2003. They are: Joshua Knau er (President), Joshua Macdonald (Vice-President), Johnny M etlej (Treasurer) and Garret MacLean (Secretary). Congratulati ons to both our incoming and outgoing councils!

This was an excellent year for MASS. Next year we will continue to bring together math and statistics students with our tra dition of high quality fun events.

 


CONFERENCES

Hong Gu and David Hamilton attended th e 2002 meeting of the International Biometric Society, Eastern North Amer ican Region, in Arlington, Virginia, March 17-20, where Hong Gu presented a talk titled "Detecting Change in Visual Field Data".

Karl Dilcher attended the Czech and Slovak Confe rence on Number Theory in September 2001 in the Czech Republic and the 20 02 Conference of the Canadian Number Theory Association in Montreal (May 2002).

Ray Spiteri, Pat Keast and Paul Muir , (professor at SMU and adjunct professor at DAL) organized a session on Numerical Analysis/Scientific Computing/Computational Applied Math ematics, at the APICS meeting in St. Francis Xavier University, October 2 0-21. This attracted speakers from Dalhousie, Saint Mary's, Memorial, and the University of New Brunswick. A one-day symposium is planned at Dalhousie on May 31 with principal speaker Professor Larry Shampine of Southern Methodist University.

Ray Spiteri attended the following conferences (where he also gave presentations ):

"Modelling and Scientific Computing Conference 2001", University of New Brunswick, Frede ricton, New Brunswick, September 29-30, 2001, New Optimal High-Order Stro ng-Stability-Preserving Time Discretization Methods.

Canadian Spring Conference on Behaviour and Brain, Fernie, British Columbia, February 2 1 - 23, 2002, Computational Modelling of Elevated-Plus-Maze Behaviour.

He also attende d a workshop titled, "PDE Methods for Pricing Path-Dependent Options" at the Fields Institute

in Toronto, February 25-26, 2002.

H. Jean Thiébaux attended and present ed an invited paper at the 2002 Interface Conference, 17- 20 April 2002, Montreal, PQ, "A new high-resolution blended real-time global sea surfa ce temperature analysis".

Shigui Ruan presented invited talks at severa l conferences including the 22nd CAIMS annual meeting in Victoria (June), the International Conference on Dynamical Systems and ODE in Beijing, Ch ina (June), the International Conference on Dynamical Systems with Applic ations in Lhasa, China (July, had some unforgettable experiences in Tibet ), the 970th AMS meeting in Chattanooga, USA (October), and the 2001 CMS winter meeting in Toronto (December). He also gave an invited plenary ta lk in the workshop on "Immunology, Ecology and Epidemiology" held at the Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge, UK (December) and was very much impres sed by the fact that there are blackboards in the Institute's washrooms.

The International Workshop on "Dynamical Systems and their Applications to Biology", organized by S. Ruan (Dal), G Wolkowicz (McMaster) and J. Wu (York) was held in Cape Breton, Canada, August 2-8, 2001. There were 45 participants came from Austria, Canada, China, Japan, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, UK, and USA, among them there were 14 PDFs and graduate students. The workshop was financially supported by the National Program Committee of the Institute (CRM, Fields, and PIMS) and Dalhousie University (Vice President for Research, Research Service and Graduate Studies). The proceedings of the workshop is being published in the Fields Institute Communications series.

Chris Field attended and organized the Intern ational Conference on Robust Statistics in May, 2002.

Keith Thompson is a member of the Coastal Oce an Observations Panel and recently attended their third meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam from 15-18 January, 2002.

Tony Thompson attended and gave a talk at the International Conference on Stochastic Geometry, Convex Bodies, Empirial Measures and Applications held in Tropes, Italy, 24-29 September 2001. He also gave a talk at the Catholic University of Milan.

The Dalhousie Math/Stats Education Study Group is a collective of fifteen faculty members and graduate students. The group h as met once every two weeks, since the start of the new year. The purpos e of the study group is to have a forum to discuss, debate, and share tea ching ideas. Each meeting consists of a twenty minute presentation, on a particular topic, followed by a forty minute discussion. In addition to the meetings, participants are regularly given handouts and journal arti cles on mathematics pedagogy.

In the past four months, the following presentations have been made:

Eleven Teaching Ideas for Your Math Classroom (Ri chard Hoshino, Dalhousie)

Perspectives on the Classroom Experience (Paul Mu ir, SMU)

Communication and the Hidden Curriculum (Pierre S tevens, Dalhousie)

Using Multimedia and Technology (Jason Brown, Dalhousie)

Quizzing Techniques in Introductory Math Classes (Suzanne Seager, MSVU)

Teaching Summer Classes (Patricia Moorhead, D alhousie)

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teachers (Ri chard Hoshino, Dalhousie)

Two of our study group members presented at the 6th Annual Dalhousie Conference on University Teaching and Learning on May 7 - 9, 2002.

Jason Brown - "Don't Have the Tail Wag the Do g — Let Pedagogy Drive the Technology"

Richard Hoshino - "Understanding the Learner"

Special thanks go to Paul Muir of St. Mary's University for graciously hosting the study group during the Dalhousie Fa culty strike in March.

For more information regarding the study group, plea se see http://www.mscs.dal.ca/~hoshino/studygroup.html

 


Summer Camps

Summer Math Camp for Black Students

Once again, the department, in cooperation with the Black Teachers Association of Nova S cotia (BEA), will hold a week-long math camp aimed at black students. It will be held during the week of July 8th under the direction of Dr. R =2EP. Gupta. Its purpose is to identify and encourage mathematical ta lent among young Black Nova Scotians. The teaching will be done by teams of faculty members as well as school teachers. Both Dalhousie and the B EA continue to support the camp financially, but now there is a new spons or, NSERC/PromoScience, which has awarded the camp a three-year grant. I t should be exciting and fun!

CMS-DALHOUSIE Math Camp

A week-long mat h camp for gifted high school students from Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island will be held by the department during the week of July 15th. The camp is sponsored by the Canadian Mathematical Society, with support fro m various sources including Dalhousie, ESSO, and NSERC/PromoScience. The aim is to identify, stimulate and encourage mathematical talent in this region. Teaching will be carried out by faculty members from Dalhousie a nd St. Mary's Universities as well as by Richard Hoshino, a Dalhou sie graduate student expert at problem-solving. This should be exciting!

This will be the third such camp. The organizers ar e Chelluri Sastri and Suraj Sikka, who conducted the two pr evious camps as well.

 


Long-term Visitors to department

Roustam Zalaletdinov January 1 - October 1, 2002

Vojtech Pravda Januar y 8 - May 1, 2002

Alena Pravdova Janua ry 8 - May 1, 2002

Jean Thiébaux, a former Professor in the Department and recently retired f rom the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, was a five-month v isitor during January through May. During this visit, Dr. Thiébau x taught a special graduate course in Analysis of Spatial Data to student s from Math and Stat, Oceanography and Biology, plus one person from a pr ivate oceanographic research company. The semester concluded with a semi nar "Techniques and Applications of Spatial Analysis for Stochastic Field s" given jointly by the students who had completed projects on their spec ial topics of choice, including:

EOF (Principal Component) Analysis

Neural Networks

Kriging Analysis

Generalized Kalman Filtering (Optimal Statist ical Objective) Analysis

Alternative techniques for analyzing abundanc e in time and space

In addition to teaching, Dr. Thiébaux has been engaged in a collaborative researc h project for Environment Canada. This project has examined statistical features of forecast winds and pressures of the Maritime Atlantic Region, through comparisons of forecast values with those of the verifying analy ses and with observation reports of the moored buoys in the region.

 


GRANTS

Research Grants - 2002

Brown, J. NSERC 23,100

Clements, J. NSERC 112,347.16 (Team) and 18,123.37

Coley, A. NSERC 25,200 and Equip. 13,500

Dilcher, K. NSERC 15,000

Field, C.A. NSERC 34,650

Fraser, A. NSERC 12,342

Grunenfelder, L. NSERC 12,000

Gu, H. NSERC 15,500

Gupta, R.P. NSERC 11,550

Hamilton, D. NSERC 16,000

Janssen, J. NSERC 17,325

Johnson, K. NSERC 9,240

Keast, P. NSERC 17,000

Milson, R. NSERC 14,000

Moriarty, K. NSERC 15,000

Nowakowski, R. NSERC 17,000 and MITACS 17,000

Paré, R. NSERC 10,395

Pronk, D. NSERC 13,000

Radjavi, H. NSERC 18,000

Ruan, S. NSERC 14,700 and MITACS 13,500

Smith, B. NSERC 45,623 and 16,275

Spiteri, R. NSERC 3,859

Susko, E. NSERC 12,600

Tan, K.K. NSERC 7,000

Thompson, A. NSERC 7,000

Thompson, K. PWGSC contracts 57,534 and 15,384; NSERC 30,000 and 7,500

Wood, R.J. NSERC 12,000

 


STATISTICS SEMINARS

2001/2002

DATE TITLE AND SPEAKER

27.08.2001 Xiaofei Shi, Confidence Regions for Phylogenetic Trees.

04.09.2001 Dan Kehler, Dalhousie: Bias in Spawner-Recruitment Functions.

13.09.2001 Bo Lin, Dalhousie: Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Phylogenetic Trees.

20.09.2001 Christopher Field, Dalhousie: Robust Analysis of Bird Data.

27.09.2001 Hal Whitehead, Dalhousie: Analysis of animal movement using opportunistic individual-identifications.

04.10.2001 George Gabor, Dalhousie: What is the Question? Sampling from a Finite Population.

18.10.2001 Marc G. Genton, North Carolina State: Robust Indirect Inference.

25.10.2001 Marc G. Genton, North Carolina State: Robustness for Correlated Observations.

01.11.2001 Tony Almudevar, Acadia: A Stochastic Contraction Mapping Theorem.

08.11.2001 Donald Fraser, Toronto: Some aspects of recent likelihood interference methods.

15.11.2001 Christopher Field, Dalhousie: Confidence Regions for Phylogenetic Trees.

17.12.2001 Mei Yang, Dalhousie: Model Selection for GARCH Models using AIC BIC.

31.01.2002 Ransom A. Myers, Dalhousie: The Simultaneous Analysis of Many Short, Noisy, Autocorrelated, Cross-correlated Multi-variate Time Series Using Nonlinear Random Effects Meta-analysis; Perhaps the Only Way to Resolve Crucial Questions in Community Ecology.

07.02.2002 Yong Song Qin and Bruce Smith, Dalhousie: Test for Homogeneity in Normal Mixtures with Unknown Means and Variances.

14.02.2002 Connie Stewart, Dalhousie: Estimating the Diet of Seals Using Fatty Acid Signatures.

01.03.2002 Stephan Morgenthaler, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne Switzerland: Two-way plots.

04.04.2002 Stephen J. Smith, Invertebrate Fisheries Division, Bedford Institute of Oceanography: Modelling the population dynamics of a scallop population.

11.04.2002 Maureen Tingley, New Brunswick, Fredericton: Detection of pattern s in noisy time series.

18.04.2002 Bashir Khan, St. Mary's: Improved estimation of the coefficient vector in a regression model.

25.04.2002 Tessema Astatkie, Nova Scotia Agricultural College: Testing for Trend in Variability of Climate Data: Measures and Temporal Aggregation with Applications to Canadian Data.

26.04.2002 Michele Millar, Dalhousie: Breeding Value Estimation and Biodiversity Considerations in Forest Genetics.

09.05.2002 The Participants in STAT 5300, Dalhousie: Techniques and Applications of Spatial Analysis for Stochastic Fields.

 


MATHEMATICS SEMINARS

2001/2002

DATE TITLE AND SPEAKER

29.11.2001 Svetlana Ostrovskaya, Centre for Intelligent Machines and Department of Mechanical Engineering, McGill: Dynamics of Reconfigurable Nonholonomic Systems

01.2002 Renzo Piccinini, Milan: Algebraic Topology Lectures. (Seminar series Tuesdays and Thursdays in January ry 2002.

04.02.2002 Roustam Zalaletdinov, Dalhousie , NATO Fellow, ICRA, Dept of Physics, University of Rome ``La Sapienza", Rome, Dept of Theoretical Physics, Inst. of Nuclear Physics, Uzbek Acad. Sci., Tashkent, Faculty of Physics, University of Tashkent, Tashkent: Volume Averages on Differentiable Manifolds with a Volume n-form.

11.02.2002 Robert Milson, Dalhousie: Chevalley's Theorem and Reflection Quotients of Euclidean Space.

17.04.2002 Dale Rolfsen, UBC: Solving equations in the Temperley-Lieb Algebras, with application to knot theory.

18.04.2002 Dale Rolfsen, UBC: Knots and polynomials.


ANECDOTE AND A PUZZLE

Edited by

Dr. S. Swaminathan

Let me tell you how at one time the famous mathematician Euclid became a physician. It was during a vacation, which I spent in Prague as I most always did, when I was attacked by an illness never before experienced, which manifested itself in chilliness and painful weariness of the whole body In order to ease my condition I took up Euclid's Elements and read for the first time his doctrine of ratio, which I found treated there in a manner entirely new to me. The ingenuity displayed in Euclid's presentation filled me with such vivid pleasure, that forthwith I felt as well as ever.

Bernard Bolzano , Selbstbiographie (Wien 1875), p.20



The Seven-Up PUZZLE.

Initially all seven cups are upside-down. The goal of this puzzle is to turn them the right way up, but each move must consist of inverting three at a time. You can choose the three from anywhere in the line, they need not for example be adjacent, and a cup may be inverted again on the next, and so on.

How many moves are necessary? How many moves would you need if the rules specified that four cups be inverted at each turn?

Puzzle answer?

 


CHASE REPORT

Is published for alumni and f riends of the Editor: Gretchen Smith, Administrator Depar tment of Mathematics and Statistics

Department of Mathematics & Statistics, gretchen@mscs.d al.ca Richard J. Nowakowski, Chair

Dalhousie University. Phone: (902) 494-2572 Bruce Smith, St atistics Director

Fax: (902) 494-5130 Alan Coley, Mathematics Director

We welcome your suggestions and comments Patrick Keast , Mathematics Graduate Coordinator

for future issues. Bruce Smith, Statistics Graduate Coo rdinator