JMU Department of Mathematics & Statistics
2004 Newsletter Updated 29 June 2004

Table of Contents

Letter from Dave Carothers, Department Head

Greetings to all from the mathematics community at JMU.

The past year at JMU has been a particularly eventful one for the field of statistics. Our major program in statistics has received final approval from the Board of Visitors and the first statistics majors graduated in December 2003. Congratulations are in order for all of those whose hard work has led to the development of this program, but we should extend special congratulations to George Marrah, retiring from JMU this year, who has been heavily involved in bringing this program to its current successful state.

It has also been a year of significant faculty accomplishments: Laura Taalman received the Trevor Evans award for outstanding writing in mathematics from the Mathematical Association of America at the Mathfest Summer meeting in Boulder, Colorado, David Pruett was named the 2003-2004 outstanding teacher by JMU's College of Science and Mathematics, and Caroline Smith was awarded a patent for techniques applying fuzzy logic in decision making, to name just a few. Students researchers continued to be successful, with several presentations at national meetings. One project in particular in computer visualization led by student Joshua Blake and faculty advisor Jim Sochacki has received significant attention and funding.

Programs for future and current schoolteachers continued to grow. A masters degree for secondary mathematics teachers offered jointly with the College of Education has been approved, and external funding has been secured for several courses for in-service teachers, in cooperation with other universities and the Virginia Mathematics and Science Coalition. These are important efforts, and we are happy to have mathematics faculty and mathematics education faculty who are willing and able to carry these programs forward.

New Faculty Members

We welcomed three new faculty members to our department this year: Elizabeth Brown, Jason Rosenhouse, and Yuji Tomita.

• Elizabeth Theta Brown came to the study of mathematics after an undergraduate major in philosophy that was motivated by epistemological concerns. Those same considerations, along with the unanticipated joy of doing mathematics, later led her to a career as a mathematician. Dr. Brown was an undergraduate at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she was a Regents' Scholar and graduated with honors in the major in 1992. She subsequently earned a Master's degree in philosophy from Boston University. She remained at Boston University for a Master's and a PhD in mathematics, finishing in 2001. She comes to JMU from a post doctoral appointment as John Wesley Young Research Instructor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.

  Elizabeth Brown's research interests are in set theory, which studies structure in the transfinite; in general terms, this is the study of infinities of ascending order. She is particularly interested in the interplay between set theory and analysis. Her teaching interests include courses across the undergraduate curriculum, especially those relating to mathematical logic.

• Jason Rosenhouse grew up in central New Jersey. His interest in math developed early on, largely after chancing upon a book of logic puzzles by Raymond Smullyan. He did his undergraduate work at Brown University, graduating in 1995. After earning his PhD from Dartmouth College in 2000, he spent three years as a post-doc at Kansas State University.

  Jason's research interests are in algebraic graph theory and number theory.

  Outside of mathematics, he particularly enjoys playing chess and reading. He also maintains the website EvolutionBlog, where he responds to arguments levelled by creationists.

• Yuji Tomita received his undergraduate degree in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse, a master's degree in Economics and Statistics and Ph.D in Statistics from the University of Virginia. He was a graduate instructor at the University of Virginia and taught an introductory statistics course.

  His research interests are in nonlinear time series analysis and chaotic time series analysis. Applications of nonlinear time series analysis are abundant and include areas such as image processing, finance, epidemiology, physiology, and genetics. His research interest lies in developing such nonlinear models in biological/medical field.

Pruett receives Distinguished Teaching Award

Dave Pruett is the recipient of the 2004-2005 Distinguished Teacher Award of the College of Science and Mathematics. Established in 1981, the award "honors exemplary teaching at the rank of assistant professor or above with full-time status and at least five years service at JMU." Award winners are selected by their respective colleges. These awards are traditionally presented at the James Madison Day convocation in March each year, when Madison Scholars, Distinguished Service recipients, and retirees are also honored.

Prior to coming to JMU in 1996, Dr. Pruett taught in the mathematical sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University and briefly at The College of William & Mary. He also has accumulated a decade of aerospace-related experience at NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC).

To Dr. Pruett, an interesting aspect of teaching mathematics is that mathematics touches upon so many other facets of human experience. For example, mathematics helps explain such mysteries as why the planets remain in elliptical orbits, why the weather is inherently unpredictable, or how an aircraft can fly. In teaching mathematics, at every level he attempts to make connections between mathematical theory and common experience. Often these connections are fostered through special projects, which he has introduced into nearly all of the ten courses he has taught in eight years at JMU. Among the tasks assigned as projects are: determine the "sweet spot" (center of percussion) of a baseball bat; use calculus to estimate the number of workers required to assemble the Great Pyramid of Cheops; estimate the age of the Shroud of Turin based upon carbon dating techniques; show that Newton's orbital mechanics satisfy Kepler's three planetary laws. More ambitious projects are sometimes accomplished by bootstrapping from basic ones. For example, in Math 448, his NASA-related experience in mathematical modeling and algorithm development for the Shuttle Entry Air Data System (SEADS) forms the basis of a semester-long "capstone" project.

In addition to teaching mathematics courses, Dr. Pruett has developed an unusual Honors course entitled: From Black Elk to Black Holes: Tales of a Mysterious Universe. In 2001, a precursor to this course won a Science-Religion Course Award from the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, which is affiliated with the Templeton Foundation. Variants of the course have been offered four times since 1999. The current version (Spring 2004) is cross-listed as HON200D and REL300- 04.

JMU Students Win Microsoft Windows ChallengE

A team from JMU, including Joshua Blake and Justin Creasy (computer science majors minoring in mathematics), won the Microsoft Windows ChallengE in March 2004. The article says it all.

Smith at Stevens

From August 2003 to July 2004, Caroline Smith has been on sabbatical in the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at Stevens Institute of Technology. Founded in 1870 in Hoboken, New Jersey, Stevens is one of the leading technological universities in the country. During her time there, Dr. Smith has presented papers at two conferences, developed and taught two web-based courses, helped organize two International conferences, taught four Masters level courses, been an Associate Editor for the IEEE transactions on Reliability, was an invited judge of the Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling, and had a paper accepted for publication.

In addition, Dr. Smith and Dr. Dinesh Verma (Stevens Institute of Technology) worked on the development of a fuzzy weighted  wedge methodology for alternative conceptual design differentiation.  In December 2003, Drs. Smith and Verma were awarded a joint patent for this work:

PATENT 60/123,110: WEIGHTED WEDGE DEFUZZIFICATION FOR CONCEPTUAL SYSTEM DESIGN EVALUATION. The aim of the patent is to allow easier and more objective comparisons of alternative conceptual designs for a particular object or system. For example, suppose that your company manufactures ballpoint pens. You have to choose between ten alternative proposed designs for a new pen. Each of the pen designs is evaluated according to eight criteria, some of which are numerical or quantitative (such as the length of time the pen writes before running out of ink, or its weight) and some of which are qualitative or non-numerical (such as how comfortable the pen feels in your hand). In order to properly evaluate these alternative conceptual designs, we need to be able to weigh up all these different criteria, some of which are more important than others. This patent utilizes the technique of fuzzy logic to convert each of the qualitative characteristics into quantitative measures, which may then be combined with the original quantitative criteria to obtain an overall fuzzy measure of the "preferability" of one design compared to another. Defuzzification is then used to convert these overall measures back to the real number line, where they may be compared in the usual way and the optimal alternative conceptual design identified. It is the technique of (i) fuzzifying (ii) combining the measures and (iii) defuzzifying, that is covered by this patent.

Virginia Department of Education Grants Provide New Opportunities for Teachers of Mathematics

JMU Mathematics/Mathematics Education faculty (Dave Carothers, Laurie Cavey, and Joy Whitenack) have been awarded two Virginia Department of Education grants funded by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Both grants are part of a statewide effort to provide classroom teachers opportunities to further their study of mathematics. One of the grants, The Middle School Mathematics Project, is slated for middle school teachers who wish to become highly qualified to teach mathematics. The other grant, the K-8 Mathematics Specialist Project is slated for classroom teachers who wish to be among the first to receive a mathematics specialist endorsement from the Commonwealth of Virginia.

These faculty members will work collaboratively with several other Virginia colleges and universities across the Commonwealth doing the work of the grant. Dr. Cavey, the project leader for The Middle School Mathematics Project, will work closely with Virginia Commonwealth University, Mary Washington College, Virginia Tech and Norfolk State University as she and her colleagues from the JMU Department of Mathematics and Statistics develop and implement courses for middle school teachers. Dr. Cavey will help design and implement one of the four courses, Algebra and Functions. The algebra course is one of four courses that participating teachers will have opportunities to take. Other courses that will be offered at JMU during the 2004-05 calendar year include: Numbers and Operations, Measurement and Geometry, and Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability. As one of the project activities, Dr. Cavey and faculty from JMU's Department of Mathematics and Statistics will offer workshops for professors and instructors from other participating universities, colleges and school districts who will teach similar courses at their respective school sites.

Dr. Joy Whitenack will direct the project activities for the K-8 Mathematics Specialist Project. As part of her responsibilities, she will work collaboratively to develop and implement several institutes with faculty from JMU's Department of Mathematics and Statistics as well as with colleagues from University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, Longwood University and Norfolk State University. One of the grant activities is to provide four 2-week summer institutes during the 2004-05 calendar years for K-8 master teachers across the state. These institutes will focus on one of four mathematical topics: Number and Operations, Rational Numbers and Proportional Reasoning, Probability and Statistics, and Geometry and Measurement. Dr. Whitenack will organize and lead the first of these institutes (Number and Operations) this July at JMU in collaboration with colleagues from JMU's Department of Mathematics and Statistics and University of Virginia. In addition to this workshop, teachers can participate in workshops offered at other, participating universities and colleges during the summers of 2004 and 2005.

To learn more about each of these projects, please contact Laurie Cavey at caveylo@jmu.edu or Joy Whitenack at whitenjw@jmu.edu.

JMU Students to Become "Math Nerds"

Laurie Cavey (mathematics education), G. Edgar Parker (mathematics) and Eric Miller (Harrisonburg High School) are collaborating to try something new with Cavey's math methods course next fall. As part of this course, pre-service teachers will use online dialogs to support high school students' understanding of algebra. The web-based platform, MathNerds (www.mathnerds.com), will be used to maintain the dialogs between Cavey's pre-service secondary mathematics teachers and Miller's algebra students.

MathNerds, created by Ted Mahavier (Lamar University) and Valerio De Angelis (Xavier University) during the summer of 1999, is an online interactive service, through which, students of all ages can receive support for learning various topics in mathematics. Students that submit questions through MathNerds are not supplied answers, but are given hints, suggestions, and references to help students determine their own solutions. In fact, volunteers from across the globe (primarily mathematicians) must first demonstrate their ability to provide such guidance by submitting sample responses before they reach the status of an official 'MathNerd'. Volunteers choose the topics, grade levels, and frequency of questions to answer. Questions are dispersed to volunteers via email, but the dialogs are always available via the web platform.

Dr. Cavey's pre-service teachers will be 'MathNerds' in a limited way since they will work to respond to questions from only Mr. Miller's algebra students. Dr. Cavey anticipates that these experiences will bring to the fore algebraic ideas with which real students struggle, and opportunities for the pre-service teachers to think critically about ways to support students' understandings. Dr. Cavey, Dr. Parker and Mr. Miller plan to meet frequently throughout the Fall 2004 semester to discuss and plan ways to use such opportunities to support pre-service teachers' understanding of how to support the advancement of algebraic reasoning. Ideas generated from these meetings will be immediately 'tried out' in Cavey's methods course.

Ted Mahavier invited four universities to pilot variations of the JMU project this fall. Dr. Mahavier, an advocate of the Moore Method, envisions widespread use of MathNerds as a means to help future secondary mathematics teachers learn how to respond to students without 'telling all', but providing enough assistance so that students are challenged to think and have enough information to be successful. JMU's pilot project is designed to serve a small group of Harrisonburg High School students, and their teacher. The goals for such collaboration with a local high school class include providing assistance with student learning and strengthening relationships between the JMU community and Harrisonburg High School. Furthermore, new knowledge gained from this project can inform the future design of mathematics content and methods courses for teachers.

The Summer 2003 REU Program

The department's NSF-sponsored Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program was interesting and successful in the summer of 2003. Eight students were chosen from over 200 applicants from across the country; the selected students worked on an intensive, 8-week research project in groups of two under the direction of a faculty mentor.

During the summer of 2003, the four research projects were:

• Leonard Van Wyk directed Philip Hackney (Central Michigan University) and Nathan Walters (Drake University) in k-alternating knots.
• Laura Taalman directed Kathryn Brownell (Lenoir-Rhyne College) and Kaitlyn O'Neil (Merrimack College) in Pretzel knots and colorability.
• Steve Garren directed Mark J. Giganti (University of Missouri) and Nathan A. Johnson (College of William and Mary) in Statistical methods for rough QTL analysis.
• Debra Warne and Paul Warne directed Danielle Miller (JMU) and Jennifer Salyer (East Tennessee State University) in Pade approximates for torsion of a compressible nonlinearly elastic cylinder: modeling, computation, and visualization.

Hackney, Walters, Brownell, O'Neil, Miller, and Salyer all traveled to the Joint AMS-MAA Meetings in Phoenix to present their work at the Special Session on Research in Mathematics by Undergraduates and at the MAA Undergraduate Research Poster Session. At the latter, Salyer and Miller won an award. In addition, Hackney, Walters, and Brownell presented their work at the Big Sky Conference on Discrete Mathematics at the University of Montana. In March 2004, Sawyer received a Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) award for an outstanding student paper presentation.

During the summer of 2004, the four research groups will be led by Laura Taalman (knot theory), Jason Rosenhouse (algebraic graph theory), Hasan Hamdan (probability and statistics), and Paul Warne (applied and computational mathematics).

Articles on JMU REU Programs

Two articles highlighting the successes of the National Science Foundation (NSF) - sponsored JMU REU programs in the departments of Chemistry, Biology, Materials Science, and Mathematics appeared in the past year:

• The September 2003 issue of the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) Quarterly [Volume 24, Number 1] featured an article entitled, "Building a Summer Research Community," by David Brakke (Dean, College of Science and Mathematics), Daniel Downey (Chemistry), Gina MacDonald (Chemistry), Chris Hughes (Physics), Leonard Van Wyk (Mathematics & Statistics), and Daniel Wubah (Biology).

  Here is an excerpt from the article:

  The approach in all of the programs is similar. We involve students working with faculty and other students in research. REU programs are expected to have seminars, perhaps sessions on ethics or graduate school opportunities and social interactions. We are now able to collaborate across disciplines to host speakers of interest to different programs, have events like ice cream socials that bring students and faculty from the various programs together and create other opportunities for social and scientific interactions that help create a larger community of researchers. The resulting climate is not only stimulating but also mutually supportive.

• The April 2004 issue of the the Association of American Colleges and Universities' AAC&U News online member newsletter featured JMU's REU programs in an article entitled, "JMU Advances Integrative and Engaged Learning through Summer Research Programs in the Sciences."

  Here is an excerpt from the article:

  James Madison was recognized by AAC&U as a Greater Expectations Leadership Institution because of its commitment to such innovative undergraduate programs. The school's summer programs, in particular, exemplify how advanced research can foster engaged learning in the sciences. Participants in the programs, who come from JMU as well as other mid-Atlantic colleges and universities, are immersed in science for ten weeks. By undertaking concentrated research and by working closely with professional scientists, they are given a sense of what they might expect from careers in science. Recent assessment surveys testify to the programs' success: Not only do students from the REUs go on to present or publish their work and to pursue postgraduate education in large numbers, but they also derive other, less tangible benefits - such as improved communication skills, perseverance, and self-confidence - from their research experiences.

There are few REU sites with such a wide variety of disciplines represented, and this variety has helped in both soliciting NSF funding and attracting student applicants from across the nation.

The "Immersive Visualization System" (IVS)

This spring and summer students from the Departments of Mathematics and Statistics and Computer Science put together a 72 node parallel-processing and visualization system now known as the "Immersive Visualization System" (IVS). The IVS was pioneered by mathematics minor Joshua Blake and Rensalear Polytechnic Institute electrical engineering major Garrett Allen under the supervision of Dr. Sochacki. Funding for the project was secured by Assistant to the Vice President JW Myers and the Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics David Brakke. The IVS is now part of the Center for Computational Mathematics and Modeling (CCMM) and is housed in the Departments of Mathematics and Statistics. The IVS will be used by faculty and students to do research in mathematics and applied mathematics, especially in the visualization of large complicated data sets.

The IVS is made up of 7 sets of (rectangular) arrays of flat panel monitors. Six of the sets are an array of 9 flat panel monitors in a 3 x 3 configuration. One panel is an array 0f 25 flat panel monitors in a 5 x 5 array. Each of the arrays are on mobile platforms that allow unlimited configurations for the IVS for viewing.

The IVS is the only one of its kind dedicated for undergraduate research. The IVS will be used by many departments across campus for both research and teaching. Several courses using the IVS will be taught in the Fall of 2004.

Several students are working on projects this summer that involve the IVS. Some of the projects are:

1. a numerical simulation of the motion of the planets,
2. a study of the chaotic motion of the double pendulum
3. numerical simulation of earthquakes
4. a realization of a fluid flow

You can see the IVS and some of the applications.

MATH 220 Goes Online

During the summer of 2003, Professors Hasan Hamdan and Arlene Casiple developed an online version of Math 220 (Elementary Statistics). This work was supported by a grant from the Summer Institute of the Center for Instructional Technology (CIT), which also provided for all the instructional and technical support throughout the preparation and delivery periods of the online classes. The instructors attended a week long summer training provided by the institute.

The online course was a new and interesting experience for both instructors. The first 2 sections were offered in the 6-week June term. Since the instructors felt that a longer term would enable them to improve the development of this material, during the summer of 2004, two 8-week sections will be offered, beginning May 17.

Talks and Presentations

Faculty members gave assorted talks and presentations at various meetings this past year, including the following.

• Elizabeth Brown presented the invited talks "Uncountable Tree Forcings" at Carnegie Mellon University and "Some Minimality Problems" at Penn State University during the spring of 2004. She has also been invited to present "Uncountable Tree Forcings" at the Special Session on Set Theory at the annual meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic at Carnegie Mellon in May 2004.
• Gary Peterson presented "Automorphism groups emitting local endomorphism nearrings. II" at the 18th International Conference on Nearrings and Nearfields held in Hamburg, Germany, 27 July 2003 - 3 August 2003.
• Ed Parker assisted in Lee May's interactive presentation "A Moore Method Introduction to Moore Method" at the 7th Annual Legacy of R. L. Moore Conference in Austin, Texas in March 2004.
• Hasan Hamdan presented "A New Experience on Teaching Basic Statistics Online" at the Joint AMS-MAA Meetings in Phoenix, January 2004.
• Paul Warne presented "An Explicit A-Priori Error Bound for the Taylor Polynomial Approximation to the Solution of Ordinary Differential Equations," (joint work with D. Carothers, G. E. Parker, J. Sochacki, and D. Warne) at the AMS Special Session on Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations at the Joint AMS-MAA Meetings in Phoenix, January 2004.
• Debra Warne and Paul Warne gave an invited talk entitled "The high-order accuracy algebraic-Maclaurin-Pade' numerical method with applications to singular differential equations from nonlinear mechanics" at the SIAM Minisymposium on Applied and Computational Mathematics: Research For and By Undergraduates at the Joint AMS-MAA Meetings in Phoenix, January 2004.
• Jason Rosenhouse presented "Cheeger Constants of Platonic Graphs" at the Joint AMS-MAA Meetings in Phoenix, January 2004.
• Caroline Smith presented "Rating and Ranking Versus Compliance Analysis; Evaluating Conceptual Design Alternatives" (joint work with D. Verma) at the Conference on Engineering Research (CSER) in Los Angeles in April 2004, as well as "Application of Fuzzy Logic To System Reliability," and invited paper, at the 4th Annual Mathematical Methods in Reliability: Methodology and Practice Conference in Santa Fe in June 2004.

Student Awards

Every spring the department recognizes the achievements of some of our outstanding students at an awards ceremony sponsored by the College of Science and Mathematics.

• J. Emmett Ikenberry Prize: Amy J. Turlington.
• Thompson Learning Future Teacher Award: Christopher E. Wall.
• Mathematics Research Awards: Jeffrey A. Evey, Clinton S. Morse, and Todd A. Svitzer.
• METRON Applied Mathematics Award: Adam J. Schweiger.
• Statistics Award: Rachel E. Dobis.

High School Math Teacher of the Year

Cathileen Love, from Parkville High School in Baltimore County, Maryland, (pictured with student Courtney Schultz) was the recipient of the 2003-2004 High School Mathematics Teacher Award from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. Department Chair, David Carothers presented the award at a reception in April. Ms. Love is the eighth recipient of the award given to a teacher who is nominated by a JMU student in recognition of a high school math teacher's work.

This year, for the first time, two JMU students nominated the winning teacher. Sophomore Courtney Schultz, who is majoring in both Mathematics and Quantitative Finance, and first-year student Rachel LaChance, who is majoring in Kinesiology, both nominated Love. Of Ms. Love, Courtney wrote, "I feel that she is the reason I love math today. She is an incredible teacher and a wonderful friend. She is funny and witty and can turn your bad day upside down. I owe my success to her, my love for math and my choice to be a math major."

Rachel wrote, "I quickly learned that she was an amazing teacher of calculus, not to mention a fun person to be around. I've always been a strong student in math, but calculus gave me some trouble, and despite the large number of students Ms. Love had, she never once objected to me asking for extra help. Ms. Love has managed to be a mother, teacher, and friend to many, many students for many years, and I can think of no other woman more deserving of such an award."

Ms. Love's name is now on a plaque in Burruss Hall. She also received a plaque of her own as the 2003-2004 recipient.

Last year's recipient, Michelle Gordon, teaches at King George High School in King George, Virginia. Previous recipients of the award are: JoAnna Sychterz of Shillington, Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Riddle of Alexandria, Robert Salewski of Fairfax, June Billings of Yorktown, Martha Blakeney of Leesburg and Kathy Beatty of Clifton.

Contributions

How would you like to help support the programs in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics? You can help by contributing to our student scholarship fund, or by making an unrestricted contribution to the department's JMU Foundation fund. Unrestricted funds can be used, for example, to support student activities or to bring student-oriented speakers to campus. Funds may be sent to: The JMU Foundation MSC 8501 James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA 22807 Mark the donation "Greater University Fund" and designate it for the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

Alumni Info

Tell us what you are doing! We'd love to hear from you. Fill out our on-line alumni information form.

Alumni News

• Here are exerpts from a letter from John Goering ('99) (see Puzzle Corner below):

  I am currently a high school teacher at Berea Christian School, Harrisonburg, Va. Besides math, I also teach science courses (Physical Science and Chemistry), a computer course, and a course on Bible doctrines. So I have the privilege of integrating mathematics with various disciplines. Thus "The Mathematical Experience" (the book John received for submitting the winning solution to last year's puzzle) will be interesting to me from that perspective. I am also greatly interested in the history and philosophy of mathematics. So I am looking forward to looking at the book from a number of angles.

  I am thankful to the mathematics faculty for the enjoyable times I had in Burruss Hall. I would appreciate if you would share this letter with some of my former teachers who might(?) remember me and might be interested in what I am doing. Some of those teachers would be Dr. Hanson, Mr. LePera, Dr. Parker, and Dr. Pruett.

• Here is a note from Jeffrey M. "Peanut" Bowyer ('88, MS '95), who is the Director of Operations & Annual Giving at the National Wrestling Coaches Association:

  Good morning Dr. Hansen, hope all is well , just wanted to drop you a note and see how everything was going in the valley and at JMU.... any good news on the old home front !!! Things here are going great for me and our organization as we have seen explosive growth in our organization since my arrival. We had 1600 members in may of 2002, and this fiscal year we have over 4000. We do a lot of educational programming for coaches at the college, high school and olympic level. Much of our program is geared to leadership, weight management & nutrition, and educational values and mission. Along with proportionality and the title IX fight. I have meet many interesting people in the 2 short years here including Steve Forbes, Don Rumsfeld, Speaker Hastert, Colin Powell, Cal Ripken and Ronnie Lott to name a few, I send a recent Picture of my dinner with Rumsfeld. Tell everyone in the department I send my best and am doing well. It doesn't seem that there are too many familiar faces left ..... oh well have a great day......peanut.

• Here is a note about alumnus Homer Austin ('66), written by Professor Carter Lyons:

  Some of you might remember an instructor you had at "Madison College" or JMU by the name of Homer Austin. Homer taught at JMU from 1967 to 1983. He was very active in the Math Club and played a seminal role in establishing statistics as a viable discipline within the department. Some of you might remember Homer as a fellow student since he also graduated from Madison College before he went off to get a Masters degree and then returned to teach while he worked on a Ph.D. at the University of Virginia. Dr. Hanson, who still teaches in the Mathematics and Statistics Department, taught Homer when he was a student. After leaving JMU, Homer took a position at Salisbury State University in Salisbury, Maryland. While he was teaching at JMU Homer was known to be an outstanding teacher. Apparently he has continued to excel at teaching, since he was recognized by the faculty at Salisbury with the "Distinguished Faculty Award," which is given annually by the faculty "on the basis of exemplary performance in the areas of teaching, professional development, and service." We all congratulate Homer on his accomplishment and wish him well. You may contact Homer at hwhomer@salisbury.edu.

Puzzle Corner

Here is last year's puzzle:

A rectangular sheet of paper is folded so that two diagonally opposite corners come together. If the crease formed is the same length as the longer side of the sheet, what is the ratio of the longer side of the sheet to the shorter side?

The winning solution was submitted by John Goering ('99), and here it is.

Here is this year's puzzle:

Are there any 10 digit numbers abcdefghij such that each digit is different, and so that the number ab is divisible by 2, abc is divisible by 3, abcd is divisible by 4, etc? If there are any, find one. Is the answer unique?

The person who submits the best solution will receive a copy of The Mathematical Experience by Phil David and Reuben Hersh. Mail your solution to Peter Kohn at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, or e-mail your solution to pkohn@math.jmu.edu.

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