Dr. Susan Goldstine

Dr. Ben Fitzpatrick

Dr. Ben Fitzpatrick is the Clarence J. Wallen, S.J. Professor of Mathematics at Loyola Marymount University in California.

Dr. Fitzpatrick received his Ph.D. form Brown Univeristy in 1988.  His interests are in applied mathematics.

Friday March 27th, 2009 at 3:00 in Oliver Hall 2079

Friday April 24th, 2009 at 3:00 in Oliver Hall 1024

Susan Goldstine received her A.B. in Mathematics and French from Amherst College in 1993 and her Ph.D. in Mathematics from Harvard University in 1998.

When she is not doing research in number theory and algebraic dynamics, she enjoys making tactile and visual mathematical models employing such diverse media as yarn, fabric, thread, glass beads, paper, steel wire, copper tubes, pinecones, and pottery, though not all at once. Some of this work can be seen at http://faculty.smcm.edu/sgoldstine.  Her institutional home is St. Mary's College of Maryland, where she strives to maintain her reputation for having the office with the most toys.

Ecological Systems Modeling of College Drinking

Heavy drinking among college students remains a pervasive problem that places students at considerable risk for a variety of negative outcomes. Over the past several decades considerable public and institutional resources have been dedicated to addressing the problem. There is growing interest in the public health and policy area for environmental solutions involving policies to change alcohol environments that lead to problem drinking. In this talk we describe dynamical systems models of college populations in terms of drinking behavior. We consider both deterministic and stochastic compartmental models. We will also present parameter estimation results in which the model is compared to survey data from colleges and universities across the US, and we will discuss some implications for changes in the minimum legal drinking age.

Come by to meet Dr. Fitzpatrick at the departmental tea starting at 2:00 in Oliver 2035.

The Discovery of Non-Euclidean Geometry

Euclid's Fifth Postulate (paraphrased): Given a line and a point not on that line, there is exactly one line through the given point parallel to the given line.

Euclid's Parallel Postulate spawned the longest-standing controversy in the history of mathematics. Could it really be that the fifth postulate does not follow from the other four? Why does Euclid prove the converse of his fifth postulate but not the fifth postulate itself? Only after two thousand years of failed attempts to demonstrate the Parallel Postulate was it finally established that the statement cannot be proven or disproven from Euclid's other postulates, and that assuming its opposite yields a new and radically different form of plane geometry.

This talk will give an overview of the events leading to this discovery, which heralded a revolution in modern mathematics, and a description of the properties of the non-Euclidean plane. The technical prerequisites are very basic Euclidean geometry (e.g., the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees) and a little bit of trigonometry, although the latter is not essential.