APRIL MEETING OF THE METROPOLITAN NEW YORK SECTION
The thirty-sixth annual meeting of the Metropolitan New
York section of the MAA was held at Sarah
Lawrence College on April 24, 1977. One hundred twenty-five people attended.
Professor Gerald Freilich of Queens College, Chairperson
of the Section, presided at the morning session
which began with the business meeting. Professor William Zlot of New York
University, Sectional Governor,
reported on major items before the Board of Governors in the past year. Of
particular interest, the proposed
amendment to the Section By-Laws affecting the nomination and election of
officers was approved by the Board of
Governors. Then the committee chairpersons gave their reports as follows:
Professor Helen Siner, the College of
Staten Island, reported on the Section Committee for Two-Year Colleges;
Professor Robert Bumcrot, Hofstra
University, reported on the Mathematics Services Committee; Dr. Harry Ruderman,
Hunter College High School,
reported on the Greater Metropolitan New York Math Fair, and the MAA High School
Contest.
The Section Award to the highest regional scorer in the
Putman Competition was presented to Mr. Eric R.
Jablow of Brooklyn College, CUNY.
Professor Israel Rose, Herbert H. Lehman College,
presented the slate of nominees for Section Officers for
1977-79. There were no other nominees from the floor and the following were
elected unanimously: Chairperson,
Robert Bumcrot, Hofstra University; Vice-Chairperson for Colleges, Godfrey
Isaacs, Lehman College; Vice-
Chairperson for Two-Year Colleges, F. R. Buianouckas, Bronx Community College;
Vice-Chairperson for High
School, Alfred Kalfus, Babylon High School.
The main part of the morning session consisted of the
following two lectures :
1. A LittleA nalysiso f WindI nstrumentsb,y H. E. Rauch,G
raduateS choola nd UniversityC enter,C UNY.
2. How to Tell That a Simple Overhand Knot Is Really Knotted, by E. E. Moise,
Queens College, CUNY.
Professor Helen B. Siner of the College of Staten Island,
Vice-Chairperson for Community Colleges, presided
at the afternoon session. Professor Howard Kleiman, Queensborough Community
College, reported on the
Speakers' Bureau and gave the Treasurer's report.
The main part of the afternoon session was a panel
discussion on How I Teach Mathematics. The panelists
were: Professor John Impagliazzo, State University of New York at Farmingdale;
Professor Melvin Hausner,
Courant Institute, NYU; Mr. J. C. Hurley, Theodore Roosevelt High School; Dr.
Harry Ruderman, Hunter
College High School.
The afternoon session continued with the following
twenty-one student and faculty papers given in five parallel
sessions coordinated by Professor Samuel Graff, John Jay College of Criminal
Justice:
1. A new course: mathematics on the hand-held calculator,
by Leon Ablon, College of Staten Island.
2. The Arkin-Hoggatt game, by Joseph Arkin, New York Academy of Science.
3. Extensions of the W. Mnich problem on rational sums and products , by Haig
Bohigian, John Jay College of
Criminal Justice.
4. Various schools of thought on probability, by Allan Caesar, U. S. Merchant
Marine Academy.
5. Nonstandard analysis, by Evan Cohn, Smithtown West High School.
6. Extensions of meaning: what is a fractional derivative ? by Michael Ecker,
Lehman College.
7. Applicability criteria for the Monte Carlo solution of systems of linear
equations, by William Edelson,
Riverside Research Institute, and Stanley Preiser, Polytechnic Institute of New
York.
8. Pythagoras' theorem for regular polytopes, by Leon Gerber, St. John's
University.
9. Kepler's second law of planetary motion, by Christopher Kingsley, Northport
High School.
10. Initial digit problem , by David Laster, Bronx High School of Science.
11. On the convergence of the series n=, ((- 1)"`1 /n), Leo Levine, Queensboro
Community College.
12. Asymptotic estimates in geometric number theory and extendible computer
storage of planar arrays, by John
Lew and Arnold Rosenberg, Mathematical Sciences Department-I.B.M.
13. An elementary proof of the law of anomalous numbers, by James Peters, St.
Bonaventure University.
14. The existence of the infinitesimal, by Keith Purcell.
15. Primitive modulo prime, by Jonathan Roberts, Bronx High School of Science.
16. Use of the computer in undergraduate mathematics courses, by F. Scalzo,
Queensboro Community College,
and A. Paullay, Bronx Community College.
17. Asymptotic and formal solutions of ordinary differential equations , by
Arthur Schlissel, John Jay College of
Criminal Justice.
18. Space and time, by Joel Schwartz, John F. Kennedy High School.
19. The incremented totient summatory function, by Paul Tartell, Stuyvesant High
School.
20. Some increasing functions of Baire class 1, by Aaron Todd, Brooklyn College.
21. Library search system, by Robert Wilson, Syosset High School.
APRIL MEETING OF THE NEBRASKA SECTION
The Annual Meeting of the Nebraska Section was held on
Friday and Saturday, April 14 and 15, 1977, jointly
with the Annual Meeting of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences, at Nebraska
Wesleyan University, Lincoln.
Fifty persons were in attendance of whom thirty-five were
members of the MAA.
Professor Stanley Luke, Chairman of the Section, reported
on a program of visitation to two and four year
colleges out of which a panel discussion was developed for the Annual Meeting.
Professor R. C. Buck of the
University of Wisconsin represented the MAA; he also presented two papers on the
program. A report was given
by Professor Mildred Gross, Sectional Governor.
Officers elected for 1977-1978 were: Chairman, P. A.
Haeder, University of Nebraska at Omaha; Chairman-
Elect, T. S. Shores, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Chairman of High School
Contest Committee, Stanley Luke,
Nebraska Wesleyan University. H. M. Cox continues as Secretary-Treasurer for the
second year of a three-year
term .
The following papers were presented:
1. Subgroups of the orthogonal group and their invariant
surfaces: a geometric approach to representation theory
of groups, by S. A. Wiitala, Nebraska Wesleyan University.
2. A definition for ordered pairs in class theory, by H. H. Schneider,
University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
3. An extremal problem for a class of regular functions, by P. D. Tuan,
University of Nebraska at Omaha.
4. Distributional supports of locally 1' function, by W. T. Franke, University
of Nebraska-Lincoln.
5. Cyclic quasi-Hadamard matrices, by R. H. Kosloski, University of Nebraska at
Omaha.'
6. Calculus with infinitesimals, by G. H. Meisters, University of
Nebraska-Lincoln.
7. Functions of several variables: Hilbert's 13th and beyond, by R. C. Buck,
University of Wisconsin.
8. Proportional reasoning as a predictor of success in science courses, by M. A.
Thornton, University of
Nebraska-Lincoln.
9. Existence theory for a quasilinear elliptic system, by A. V Lair, University
of South Dakota.
10. A sufficiency testfor constrained optimization, by Stephen Montague ,
University of Nebraska at Omaha.
11. Some intersection properties of cut sets of an irreducible connected
subspace, by Edwin Halfar, University of
Nebraska-Lincoln.
12. Results and statistical summary of the 1977 annual high school mathematics
contest in Nebraska and South
Dakota, by L. J. Stephens, University of Nebraska at Omaha.
13. Panel discussion: future curricula in collegiate mathematics, by D. W.
Behrens, J. S. Downing, J. A. Kaus,
and J. F. Wampler.
14. A role for speculation, by R. C. Buck, University of Wisconsin.
An informal luncheon was held at the Nebraska Wesleyan
Student Center.
