Announcements

Congratulations to Dr. Richard Jarvinen of Winona State University on being awarded the MAA-NCS Meritorious Service Award for 2008 (citation available here).

Congratulations to Dr. Jason Douma of the University of Sioux Falls on being awarded the MAA-NCS Distinguished Teaching Award for 2008 (citation available here).

The Spring 2008 MAA-NCS Section Meeting was held April 25-26, 2008 at the College of St. Benedict, in blustery St. Joseph, MN.  Executive Committee minutes and Business Meeting minutes are now available on the website.   The spring meeting program and the spring newsletter are also still available. The invited speakers were Deanna Haunsperger (Carleton College) and Paul Zorn (St. Olaf College).  (see side panel)

The Fall 2007 NCS Team Competition was held for Saturday, November 10, 2007.  Congratulations to Team "Erick" from Gustavus Adolphus College, the first place winner.  For the rest of the top third teams and copies of the problems and solutions, visit the NCS Team Competition page.

Learn more about the MAA North Central Section NExT.

Spring Invited Speakers

Revisiting Familiar Places:

What I Learned at the Magazine

Paul Zorn (bio)

St. Olaf College

Among the side benefits of editing  Mathematics Magazine was to learn a lot of mathematics.   Much was completely new to me, but could there possibly be anything new to learn about cubic polynomials?  Countable sets?  Equilateral triangles?  Bijective functions? 

The short answer is yes.  The Magazine and other undergraduate journals are rich sources of novel --- and often surprising --- views of supposedly familiar, thoroughly understood, topics from undergraduate mathematics.     I'll give some examples that worked for me.    That such examples exist attests partly to the speaker's ignorance, but also to the depth and richness of our subject.

Bright Lights on the Horizon

Deanna Haunsperger (bio)

Carleton College

What do a square-wheeled bicycle, a 17th-century French painting, and the Indiana legislature all have in common?  They appear among the many bright stars on the horizon of mathematics, or perhaps, more correctly, in  Math Horizons.  Math Horizons, the undergraduate magazine started by the MAA in 1994, publishes articles to introduce students to the world of mathematics outside the classroom.  Some of mathematics' best expositors have written for MH over the years; here are some of the highlights from the first ten years of Horizons.