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Congratulations to Spring 2018 Integration Bee winners

winners of first annual integration bee

On April 19, 2018, UConn’s graduate student chapter of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) organized the math department’s first annual integration bee, in which undergraduates came together to test their skill at (indefinite) integration.

After welcoming remarks by department head Ambar Sengupta and the AMS Graduate Student Chapter officers, the students got to work. In the first round each student was given 5 minutes to compute 3 integrals. In later rounds students came up to the blackboard in groups of four to compute an integral in four minutes. A wrong answer or no answer was a strike against a student and, unlike in baseball, after 2 strikes the student was out.

After three hours the four remaining contenders were Nick Juricic, Grace Lauber, Zhongwei Wang, and Zerun Zhao. Grace and Zerun competed for third place, with Grace clutching that position with only seconds to spare. In the last round Nick and Zhongwei competed to compute the integral of cot(x)sec^2(x), which Nick figured out to take first place.

The winners received gift certificates from several area businesses: Bonchon Chicken, Gansett Wraps, Kathmandu Kitchen, Lizzie’s Curbside, Moe’s Southwest Grill, Starbucks, and Subway. All participants received a free meal compliments of the AMS and the brain nourishment that comes from solving math problems.

The AMS graduate student chapter thanks all the participants and volunteers for their help making this event a success and it looks forward to organizing the Integration Bee again next year.

Pictured above, from left to right, Nick Juricic (1st place), Zhongwei Wang (2nd place), Grace Lauber (3rd place), and Zerun Zhao (4th place).

Awards Day 2018

Please mark your calendars to come celebrate and support our students’ achievements!

The Department of Mathematics’ Annual Awards Day Ceremony will take place on Wednesday, April 25th. There will be a small reception at 3:00 pm in MONT 201, followed by the Awards Ceremony at 3:30 pm in MONT 104 and invited lecture at 4:00 pm by David Constantine (Wesleyan) on “Entropy, Symmetry, and Rigidity”.

For the full program, click here.

All are invited!

AMS Student Chapter Presents: First Annual UConn Integration Bee!

On April 19th the math department will host its first integration bee, which we hope will become an annual tradition. An integration bee is like a spelling bee, but students take turns computing integrals instead of spelling words. There will be prizes for the top students and free refreshments for everyone.

The Integration Bee will take place on April 19th at 5 PM in Monteith 313. All undergraduates who are familiar with the material on integration methods from Calculus II are welcome to participate. Walk-ins are welcome, but it is preferred that students who plan to attend send an email by April 18th to Zoe Cramer.

Download flyer.

The event is organized by UConn’s AMS Graduate Student Chapter.

Major Exploration Week

For most days of the week February 12-16, the math department will have events that are open to students deciding on a major, in order to help them determine if math would be a good fit. These include courses that are open to visitors and panel discussions or presentations by faculty.

February 13th

12:30-1:45: Two courses open to visitors are Math 2110 – Multivariable Calculus in Arjona 105 and Math 2710 – Transition to Advanced Mathematics in Monteith 321.

3:00-4:00: A faculty panel discussion What is math research? in Monteith 313.

February 14th

11:15-12:05: A course open to visitors is Math 3265 – Applied Mathematical Logic in Monteith 225.

February 15th

12:30-1:45: A course open to visitors is Math 3094 – Mathematics of Encryption in Monteith 314.

4:00-5:00: A faculty panel discussion Exploring UConn math degrees in Monteith 313.

February 16th

2:00-3:00 PM: A faculty presentation Math: What is it good for? in Monteith 226.

Graduate student designs tool to raise colorblindness awareness

David Nichols, a graduate student in mathematics studying mathematical logic, has published a web application that shows users whether a given color palette is accessible to viewers who are colorblind. It uses simulations of colorblindness to allow instructors with normal color vision to see in low-dimensional color spaces and choose the colors they use to communicate to their students accordingly.

You can try out the tool yourself.

Valdez, Vadiveloo and Gan receive CAE research grant from the Society of Actuaries

Professors Emiliano A. Valdez, Jeyaraj Vadiveloo and Guojun Gan have been awarded a Center of Actuarial Excellence (CAE) research grant from the Society of Actuaries. The grant will support a three-year (2017-2020) research project on “Applying Data Mining Techniques in Actuarial Science” which aims to examine and evaluate data mining tools and approaches for analyzing data in actuarial science and insurance. In particular, they will focus on tools and methods that will effectively demonstrate on how actuaries can use them to preform predictive analytics in three specific areas: claims tracking and monitoring in life insurance, understanding policyholder behavior in general insurance, and model efficiency for variable annuity products.

This research grant is part of a competition that is sponsored by the Society of Actuaries each year for schools that have received the CAE designation. The submission process involves passing two rounds that make it extremely competitive and the review process normally takes about 5-6 months till final decision. In the first round, interested CAE universities must submit a brief letter of intent with a summary of proposed research project. In 2016, 18 CAE schools submitted letters of intent and only about half were invited to submit a full proposal in the second round. Full proposals are then judged according to five criteria: impact, cost-benefit, uniqueness, viability, and overall quality. Each year, only about 2-3 universities receive an education or research grant.

This is the first time that the SOA awarded such a research grant to the University of Connecticut. Other universities that have received such grants include University of Waterloo, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and University of Michigan. A complete list of past CAE grant awards may be found here (https://www.soa.org/Education/Resources/Cae/edu-cae-grants-award-history.aspx).

A website detailing the UConn research grant may be found on this link