Students to present at math conference
Three Fredonia students will be presenting individual research at the 75th Anniversary Conference of the Seaway Section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) on Friday, April 17 and Saturday, April 18 at Colgate University.
Participating students include senior John Tucker of Derby, majoring in Mathematics and Physics; senior Rosalie Siciliano of Grahamsville, a Mathematics major; and junior Danielle Czerwinski of Hamburg, a Mathematics and Adolescence Education major.
Mr. Tucker’s talk, “Cavalieri's Principle for Surface Area,” will use calculus techniques to investigate the surface areas of a number of transformed objects and present some results in the spirit of Cavalieri.
Ms. Siciliano’s talk, “Buffon's Rectangle Problem,” will present a solution to the Buffon Needle Problem where the needles are replaced with rectangles. The solution to the problem of finding the probability of a needle hitting a line when it is thrown on to a grid of squares will also be present.
Ms. Czerwinski’s talk, “Misconceptions Concerning the Laws of Exponents: College Students' Struggles with Exponential Expressions,” is a component of the teachers’ master’s degree capstone project in secondary and college mathematics. Her research is specific to college student misconceptions in secondary school mathematics.
Fredonia is one of many SUNY campuses being represented at this conference. In addition to student talks, there will be various workshops such as a session on preserving and writing the history of mathematics departments in U.S. colleges and universities, and a workshop on leadership in the mathematical sciences.
