1. science
2. mathematics

2015 MAA Kansas Section Meeting
Fort Scott Community College
Schedule of Events
Friday, March 27
Bailey Hall, A-127 and A-128
7:00-7:30 pm
Registration outside of A-127 and A-128
7:30-7:40 pm
Welcome by FSCC Dean of Students, Robert Goltra
7:40-8:30 pm
Keynote Address: Mentoring Women and Underrepresented
Minorities in Mathematics
Dr. Jenna Carpenter, 1st Vice-President of MAA
8:30-9:30 pm
Reception in the Student Union
Saturday, March 28
All contributed talks are in Bailey Hall
Continental breakfast in the Student Union and
Registration outside of A-127 and A-128
7:30-9:00 am
8:00-8:30 am
A-124
8:00-11:00 am
TBA
8:00 am-11:30 pm
1:30 pm-3:00 pm
Outside of A-129
Chairs and Liaisons meeting
Kansas Collegiate Mathematics Competition
MAA book display
Session A: 8:30-8:55 am – 20-minute talks – parallel sessions
A-124
A-123
A-134
Ananda Jayawardhana - Pittsburg State University, Faculty
Schematic Box Plots and Outliers
Bill Weber - Fort Hays State University, Faculty
FHSU Noyce Teacher-Leaders for Western Kansas
Sarbari Mitra and Soumya Bhoumik - Fort Hays State University, Faculty
On k-graceful Labeling of 1-Crown for Complete Bipartite Graphs
Session B: 9:00-9:25 am – 20-minute talks – parallel sessions
A-124
A-123
A-134
Mohammad Riazi-Kermani - Fort Hays State University, Faculty
Proof by Consistency
Gaspar Porta - Washburn University, Faculty
Course Experiences for Advanced Problem Solving Techniques (APST) –
A problem solving course
Joe Yanik and Betsy Yanik - Emporia State University, Faculty
Mathematics in Myanmar
Session C: 9:30-9:55 am – 20-minute talks – parallel sessions
A-124
A-123
A-134
Keith Dreiling - Fort Hays State University, Faculty
Donuts and Slinkies
Andrew G. Bennett - Kansas State University
Bailout Pre-Calculus
Betsy Yanik - Emporia State University, Faculty
Overview of the 2015 CUPM Curriculum Guide
Session D: 10:00-10:25 am – 20-minute talks – parallel sessions
A-124
A-123
A-134
Cynthia Huffman - Pittsburg State University, Faculty
Archimedes’ Secrets Revealed
Scott Van Thuong - Pittsburg State University, Faculty
Wallpaper Groups and their Generalizations
***OPTIONAL ***
Betsy Yanik - Emporia State University, Faculty
Open for General Discussion
10:40-11:20 am Kansas Section Business Meeting in A-127 and A-128
Lobby of the Ellis Fine Arts Building
11:30 am-12:30 pm Lunch
Return to Bailey Hall
12:40-1:30 pm Invited Address:
Dr. Jenna Carpenter, 1st Vice-President of MAA
in A-127 and A-128
1:30-1:55 pm Awards Ceremony in A-127 and A-128
Session E: 2:00-2:25 pm – 20-minute talks – parallel sessions
A-124
A-123
Max Goering - Kansas State University, Graduate Student
Inventory accumulation and quadrangulations of the sphere
Savanna O’Toole - Pittsburg State University, Graduate Student
Solving Number Puzzles Using Gröbner Basis
Session F: 2:30-2:55 pm – 20-minute talks – parallel sessions
A-124
A-123
Srividhya Balaji - Pittsburg State University, Graduate Student
Katapayadhi System: An ancient Indian system of Encoding
Minh Bui - Pittsburg State University, Undergraduate Student
Time Series Analysis in American air passengers
2015 MAA Kansas Section Meeting
Titles and Abstracts
Keynote Address
Jenna Carpenter - 1st Vice-President of the Mathematical Association of America
Mentoring Women and Underrepresented Minorities in Mathematics
While mathematics fairs better than some STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields
in attracting women and underrepresented minorities, there are still many issues which can negatively
affect their success. Research has repeatedly shown that a diverse community of learners and scholars
benefits everyone. So what can the mathematical community do to improve our recruiting and
retention of these students? This talk will review some of the common roadblocks, look at what
research says about those roadblocks, and present some practical strategies for addressing them which
will help all students be more successful in their pursuit of mathematics.
Invited Address
Jenna Carpenter - 1st Vice-President of the Mathematical Association of America
Women in Computing
This talk looks at the central role that women played in computing, starting in the late 1800's through
the dawn of the electronic computing age in World War II.
Contributed Presentations
Srividhya Balaji - Pittsburg State University, Graduate Student
Katapayadhi System: An ancient Indian system of Encoding
The Katapayadhi System is an ancient Indian method of encoding numerals into letters of the Sanskrit
and forming meaningful words. The oldest available evidence of the use of Katapayadhi system is in 683
CE. It was used to record planetary positions and altitudes, which could then be encoded into a
meaningful word and thus could be remembered easily. A specific application of this system could be
found in the naming of Melakarta Ragas (Modes of South Indian Classical Music). There are total of 72
Melakarta Ragas and for the sake of remembering their numbers, meaningful names have been given to
them, so that when decoded, it would give the raga’s number.
Andrew G. Bennett - Kansas State University
Bailout Pre-Calculus
Failing or dropping a course is often a precursor to leaving STEM majors or even the university itself. To
successfully improve retention in STEM in general and Engineering in particular, we need to reduce the
losses from this initial hurdle. In an attempt to retain these students, we have introduced a “Bailout PreCalculus” course that begins after the first exam in Calculus 1. Students who are failing Calculus 1 are
able to transfer from Calculus 1 to the Pre-Calculus without charge and without any record on their
transcript of their initial attempt at Calculus 1. This allows the students to experience success instead of
failure and should lead to improved retention.
Minh Bui - Pittsburg State University, Undergraduate Student
Time Series Analysis in American air passengers
Recent events like the Malaysia air crash or its disappearance have negatively impacted the Malaysian
airline in many facets. One of the impacts is the decrease in the number of air passengers using the
Malaysian airline after those accidents. This emphasizes the importance of being able to forecast
numbers of air passengers. In the literature, there are two common approaches to forecasting
international travel and tourism demand. These are econometric models and time series models. This
paper discusses different techniques in time series analysis, along with showing the relationship with
economic cycles, natural disasters, wars, accidents, and man-made disasters in United States air
passenger numbers.
Keith Dreiling - Fort Hays State University, Faculty
Donuts and Slinkies
Geometer’s Sketchpad will be used to create drawings that appear to be three-dimensional. Basic
knowledge of Sketchpad is helpful, but not required.
Max Goering - Kansas State University, Graduate Student
Inventory accumulation and quadrangulations of the sphere
We discuss a bijection due to Scott Sheffield which is based on the LastIn FirstOut (LIFO) model of
inventory accumulation. This bijection puts planar maps (e.g. quadrangulations of the sphere) in one-toone correspondence with words in a specific semialgebra. It is worthwhile to try and understand the
relationship between global geometric properties of the planar maps and local quantitative observations
in the corresponding words. Our goal is to design certain modulus computations for some families of
walks on the planar maps and then observe how the modulus varies when the corresponding words are
varied in an approximately continuous way.
Cynthia Huffman - Pittsburg State University, Faculty
Archimedes’ Secrets Revealed
Sixteen years ago a Byzantine prayer book was sold at a Christie’s auction for over 2 million dollars in
just 2 minutes to an anonymous buyer. This medieval parchment book is a palimpsest, a book whose
pages are from other manuscripts with the original writing mostly removed. Included in these other
manuscripts were copies of works by Archimedes, the greatest mathematician of antiquity. Since it was
bought at auction, the Archimedes Palimpsest has been analyzed and digitally enhanced to make the
underlying text more legible. In this presentation, we’ll reveal some of the fascinating and surprising
discoveries that have been revealed by scholars analyzing the underlying texts.
Ananda Jayawardhana - Pittsburg State University, Faculty
Schematic Box Plots and Outliers
The basic box plot has a box extending from the first quartile to the third quartile and whiskers
extending from first quartile to the minimum and from third quartile to the maximum. Median is also
marked inside the box. Schematic box plots add inner and outer fences and define mild and serious
outliers. Typical conclusion is that the outliers come from a different distribution than the distribution
of the other data. Is this always true? An answer using a simulation study will be presented.
Sarbari Mitra and Soumya Bhoumik - Fort Hays State University, Faculty
On k-graceful Labeling of 1-Crown for Complete Bipartite Graphs
For any positive integers m, n, K m,n represents the Complete Bipartite Graph. A graph G K m,n O K1
is called 1−crown for Complete Bipartite Graph K m,n, as there is a pendant edge joined with every
vertex of K m,n. In this paper we show that G is graceful when n ≤ m ≤ n2 + n. This is an improvement on
the bound of m as proposed by Sethuraman and Elumalai. Moreover, Ma ke-jie proposed a conjecture
that pendant edge extension of complete bipartite graph is k -graceful graph for k ≥ 2. In this paper we
𝑘
prove his conjecture for n ≤ m ≤ n2 + ⌊ ⌋ + r.
𝑛
Savanna O’Toole – Pittsburg State University, Graduate Student
Solving Number Puzzles Using Gröbner Basis
Every day in the newspaper there are several number puzzles such as Sudoku and KenKen you can
complete during your morning coffee. What if there was a way to solve these puzzles faster or even a
way to check your answer without waiting for the next paper? With Maple and Gröbner Basis, there is
a way! In this presentation, I will demonstrate how to apply Gröbner Basis to different number puzzles
and use Maple to compute the answers.
Gaspar Porta - Washburn University, Faculty
Course Experiences for Advanced Problem Solving Techniques (APST)—a problem solving course
In this talk I will describe some of the experiences and techniques I have used while teaching a problem
solving course. I will present some of the more engaging problems and some of the student techniques I
observed. I will describe some of the algorithmic strategies some students used. Finally, I a compilation
of the algorithmic codes students in the past used is being compiled for future use. This part of the
project is my current focus, and I will describe some of the challenges that are arising.
Mohammad Riazi-Kermani - Fort Hays State University, Faculty
Proof by Consistency
Proof by consistency is a straight forward method to prove formulas or design algorithms that are rather
cumbersome by the traditional methods. The Lagrange’s triple cross product formula, associativity of
matrix multiplication, Sympson’s Rule of numerical integration, central difference formulas for
numerical differentiation, Runge-Kutta and Adams Bashfort Methods of solving ordinary differential
equations are few examples where a proof by consistency will save time and effort in comparison with
other approaches.
Scott Van Thuong - Pittsburg State University, Faculty
Wallpaper Groups and their Generalizations
Patterns are abundant in our world. Imagine the patterns on quilts, rugs, floor tiles, and wallpaper. Such
patterns are classified by the 17 wallpaper groups. Wallpaper groups are also known as 2-dimensional
crystallographic groups, and they generalize naturally to higher dimensions. For example, 3-dimensional
crystallographic groups describe the structure of crystals. We will survey the 17 wallpaper groups, their
generalizations, and some active areas of research.
Bill Weber - Fort Hays State University, Faculty
FHSU Noyce Teacher-Leaders for Western Kansas
Now in year 3 of our 5 year NSF-funded grant to help prepare high quality math teachers, I will
summarize years 1 & 2 of our program, specifically noting the perceived successes of the program
through both the student and faculty perspectives.
Betsy Yanik - Emporia State University, Faculty
Overview of the 2015 CUPM Curriculum Guide
The speaker served on the steering committee for the 2015 Curriculum Guide. An overview of this
document and its components will be presented. Following this the session will be open for a general
discussion.
Joe Yanik and Betsy Yanik - Emporia State University, Faculty
Mathematics in Myanmar
In November, 2014 we were invited speakers at the 7th International Conference on Science and
Mathematics in Developing Countries in Mandalay, Myanmar. We will talk about our experiences there
and about the upcoming 8th International Conference to be held in Yangdong, Myanmar in November,
2015.
*All presentations are suitable for a student audience.