Information about our Fall 2022 Section Meeting at Coe College is being added as it is available. Please continue to check back as we get closer to the meeting!
The Section Meeting will return to its typical format: Section NExT activities on Friday morning, parallel sessions Friday afternoon, a plenary talks Friday night and Saturday morning, parallel sessions and the business meeting through the day on Saturday, and capped with a plenary talk by a Section teaching award winner.
Schedule and Keynote Speakers
The schedule of events is now available. Abstracts for the keynote speakers are below, and abstracts for contributed talks are alphabetical by speaker.
Schedule changes
The talk by Praneel Samanta (U of Iowa) has been canceled.
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A Survey of Diophantine Equations
There are many beautiful identities involving positive integers. For example, Pythagoras knew \(3^2 + 4^2 = 5^2\) while Plato knew \(3^3 + 4^3 + 5^3 = 6^3\). Euler discovered \(59^4 + 158^4 = 133^4 + 134^4\), and even a famous story involving G.H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan involves \(1^3 + 12^3 = 9^3 + 10^3\). But how does one find such identities?
Around the third century, the Greek mathematician Diophantus of Alexandria introduced a systematic study of integer solutions to polynomial equations. In this talk, we'll focus on various types of so-called Diophantine Equations, discussing such topics as Pythagorean Triples, Pell's Equations, Elliptic Curves, and Fermat's Last Theorem.
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Climate change impacts on hurricane storm surge risk
It is widely accepted that climate change will cause global mean sea level rise and increase coastal flood risk in many places. However, climate change also has significant implications for tropical cyclone climatology. Specifically, hurricane intensity, size, and translation speed are all expected to intensify in the future, and each of these influences storm surge generation and propagation. Computational modeling plays a vital role in investigating the impacts of these unobserved changes on storm surges. In this seminar, I'll discuss two computational modeling approaches we've taken to understanding what this means for storm surge risk.
In the first approach, we use a statistical/deterministic hurricane model along with the computational hydrodynamic model, SLOSH, to simulate synthetic storm surges for coastal communities along the U.S. North Atlantic. We use extreme value analysis to determine probability distributions of storm tide, and integrate probability distributions of local sea level rise to understand the present day flood risk and how it may change over the next century. We find that for most of the observed regions flood risk can be expected to increase by a factor of 10. In the second approach, we use the convection permitting regional climate model, WRF, and the high fidelity computational storm surge model, ADCIRC, to simulate historical storm surges that impacted the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Coasts of the continental United States from 2000-2013. We then simulate the same storm surges under projected end of century climate conditions to assess the impact of climate change on storm surge inundation. We find that the volume of inundation increases for over half of the simulated storms and the average change for all storms is +36%, with notable increases in inundation occur near Texas, Mississippi, the Gulf Coast of Florida, the Carolinas, Virginia, and New York.
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On Teaching Mathematics in College: What Not to Do
Many of my esteemed colleagues have spoken to you about ways to improve your teaching of mathematics and gave encouraging and helpful suggestions about new ways of looking at the practice of teaching. Well, I am now feeling old enough to share with you some of the mistakes I have made and, perhaps, to give you substitutions to use when you are tempted to repeat said mistakes. As we have learned in the last few years, it is not enough to become a good teacher because life is going to throw stumbling blocks (pandemics) in your way. This talk is designed to help you pick yourself off after tripping because everyone falls. A teacher learns from the fall.
Call for Student and Faculty Papers
As usual, we hope for a wide variety of talks from our own members. If you have something interesting to say about mathematics or teaching, contribute a talk and share with the rest of the section. Students (both undergraduates and graduates) are encouraged to participate.
Proposals for talks are due by September 23.
Registration
Online registration is helpful for planning purposes, and it also allows you to pay using Venmo. Please register online by Wednesday, September 28, 2022.
Elections
Vice-Chair Elect
Katherine Vance is an associate professor of mathematics and co-director of undergraduate research at Simpson College. She is a Green16 MAA Project NExT fellow, has been a member of the MAA Iowa Section since 2016, and is concluding her term as a member of the Iowa-NExT steering committee. Katherine’s mathematical and teaching interests are in knot theory, random spatial graphs, and data science.
Secretary
Ross Sweet is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Simpson College and has been a member of the Iowa MAA since starting at Simpson in 2017, serving as Secretary of the Section 2018-2022. Ross is interested in math education, topology, and data science and is proud to be part of the community of math educators in Iowa.
Campus Information
Please consult the Coe College parking map. Attendees can park in any of the yellow-colored lots. Campus security will not be ticketing on Sept. 30 - Oct. 1, so visitor permits are not required. Lots I, H, G (yellow part only), and L are recommended. Parking on streets going through campus is allowed, subject to posted signage/restrictions. These are city streets patrolled by the police department.
Registration and parallel sessions will be held in Stuart Hall. Hickok Hall be used for whole group events. Iowa-NExT activities will be held in the Eppley Room in the lower part of Gage Memorial Union.
Lodging Near Coe
For all hotels, the last day to reserve the group rate is September 9, 2022.
Hampton Inn Cedar Rapids, 3265 6th St SW, Cedar Rapids, IA 52404. Call 319-362-8144 and give confirmation #91016197 to book.
$153 for 1 king bed
$158 for 2 queen beds
Quality Inn at Collins Road, 5055 Rockwell Dr NE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52402. Call 319-393-8247 and ask for the Iowa MAA group rate to book.
$80 for 1 king bed
$80 for 2 queen beds
Comfort Inn & Suites Cedar Rapids North - Collins Road, 2025 Werner Ave NE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52402. Call 319-378-8888 and ask for the Iowa MAA group rate to book.
$120 for 1 king bed
$120 for 2 queen beds
Marriott Cedar Rapids, 1200 Collins Road NE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52402. Book online.
$140 for 1 king bed
$140 for 2 double beds
Best Western Plus, 90 Twixt Town Road NE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52402. Call 319-377-6386 and ask for the Iowa MAA group rate to book.
$109 for 1 king bed
$129 for 2 queen beds
SureStay Hotel, 3315 Southgate Ct SW, Cedar Rapids, IA 52402. Call 319-362-9012 and ask for the Iowa MAA group rate to book.
$79 for 2 queen beds