The 2015 CUNY Math Challenge is open to any matriculated undergraduate student; registration is open through February 18, 2015.  Sponsored by the Office of Academic Affairs and the CUNY Institute for Software Design and Development (CISDD) and supported by the Office of the Chancellor, the CUNY Math Challenge seeks to identify and reward CUNY’s best math talent.  Please encourage students to register!  Cash prizes range from $100 to $2,500.

The contest begins online at 9 am on Monday, February 9, 2015 and ends after an in-person exam at 10 am on Sunday, April 26, 2015.   Winners will be recognized at a reception in May.

Register at http://math.cisdd.org

CUNY’s Office of Academic Affairs has released the 2015 Application for the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Mathematics Instruction.

Full-time and part-time faculty at CUNY community colleges, comprehensive colleges, and senior colleges are eligible to apply.  Awards in the amount of $5,000 are based on evidence demonstrating that the faculty member’s students improved their skills in math as a result of a particular successful technique or action. Materials submitted by candidates include evidence of excellent instructional methods, as measured by improvements in student learning, within at least the past year. Eligible courses for the award are developmental or credit-bearing mathematics courses up to and including the first year of calculus.

Applications, which are due February 12, 2015, contain detailed information and criteria.  CUNY math faculty are encouraged to apply!  Questions can be emailed to: [email protected]

This past Sunday, did you see hundreds of photos from the People’s Climate March posted on your friends’ Facebook and kick yourself for having a lazy afternoon on your couch (as I kind of did)?

The New York Times reported that, on September 21, approximately 311,000 people participated in the March in New York City. The article said that the number was “… provided by 35 crowd spotters and analyzed by a mathematician from Carnegie Mellon University…”

There seem to be at least a few different ways of counting crowds, many of which use a basic “area times density” principle. They include the classic technique developed in the 1960s called the Jacobs Method, and updated, more accurate methods such as Yip and Watson’s.

While 311,000 was more than enough to make me wonder why I didn’t join this historic event, the event’s organizer claims that nearly 400,000 marched. There is no way to know whether this discrepancy comes from simple errors, or public relations motives. Or is there?

Professors: Do you think you can use this topic in any of your math classes? If so, in which course and how?

(Photo courtesy of Professor Jonathan Cornick at QCC, who was one of those Facebook friends)

I am an Associate Professor in the Mathematics and Computer Science Department at Queensborough Community College, and I have spent the last six years working on improving remedial mathematics.

When I started at QCC in 2007, students either placed into a semester long elementary algebra course, or a semester long arithmetic course after which, if they passed, they were required to take the elementary algebra course. The majority of students coming to QCC placed into one of these courses. Success rates were very low – for example only 3% of students placing into arithmetic graduated with an Associates degree within six years, only 10% of them even exited remediation, and in general passing rates in elementary algebra were consistently 35-40%.

I have been involved in several evidence-based reforms to address the low success rates of students who place into remedial mathematics. Each step the changes have been directed by a growing body of peer reviewed research, and by careful analysis of local statistical data.

In 2009 the QCC math department created a compressed 4-week, 20-hour version of the arithmetic course. This course was successful in the sense that students passed at a much higher rate, despite having the same curriculum and exit requirements as the traditional course. However, later analysis revealed that these students weren’t passing elementary algebra at a greater rate than before. The arithmetic course(s) seemed mainly to serve as an obstacle to student success. In Spring 2013 the department voted to eliminate the arithmetic course completely for a variety of reasons.

Together with my colleagues G. Michael Guy and Karan Puri, we studied the effect of the course elimination and found that students who would previously have placed into arithmetic were not adversely affected in the rate at which they passed elementary algebra. This study has been published in MathAMATYC Educator.

Of course, we are under no illusion that we have magically solved the issue of weak arithmetic skills in some of our students, but we believe that an arithmetic course is not the solution to this issue. Students, who learn an arithmetic skill in one course, aren’t likely to remember it 4-6 months later when it’s required in algebra if they weren’t given a context in the first place.

However, whether students take arithmetic or not, exit rates from remedial mathematics at QCC remain disturbingly low in the 35-40% range. In an attempt to address thiswe wrote an elementary algebra book in which we contextualize arithmetic skills and introduce them “just in time”. For example, we start with linear equations, which only require positive integer operations to solve, then review signed numbers, and then move on to linear equations with negative number operations. Initial results have been promising, in a study involving six instructors using this textbook students were nearly twice as likely to pass the course as opposed to a control group taught be instructors using the standard departmental text.

Our emphasis is on rethinking pedagogy and using time more effectively for student centered problem solving rather than shifting the issue to a lower course.

My research, supported this year by a Chancellor’s Research Fellowship for Community Colleges, will focus on these questions:

1. How do students who would have formerly been placed into arithmetic perform in their credit math course(s)?
2. How do students who take remedial algebra in classes with our contextualized textbook and student centered problem solving pedagogy perform in subsequent credit math course(s)?
3. How do various attributes and attitudes influence student success, and what can we do inside and outside the classroom to support those which have a positive effect, and change those which have a negative effect?

In Spring 2014, Interim Chancellor Kelly awarded 19 “Chancellor’s Research Fellowships” to faculty at CUNY’s community colleges through a highly competitive process.  These fellowships fund research in many disciplines during the 2014-2015 academic year.  Three of the Fellows are mathematicians.  Luis Fernandez from Bronx Community College submitted a proposal regarding the curvature of harmonic surfaces in spheres. Uma Iyer, also from Bronx Community College, will examine representations of algebras of quantum differential operators.  Queensborough Community College’s Jonathan Cornick will engage in a longitudinal study of remedial mathematics reform.  Congratulations to these faculty.

Stay tuned!  Professor Cornick will keep CUNYMath blog readers apprised of his research.

Calculus Boot Camp, an initiative of Interim Chancellor William Kelly, has launched at six CUNY campuses.  In July and August 2014, hundreds of students across Baruch College, Brooklyn College, City College, LaGuardia Community College, Lehman College and NYC College of Technology will participate in free workshops on campus.  Designed to enhance  the skills of students between their spring semester of Pre-Calculus and fall semester of Calculus, Boot Camp aims to give participants an advance look at the material they will cover for credit in a few short weeks. The program is sponsored by the CUNY Central Office of Academic Affairs, and will include an evaluation component to gauge its effects.

Math faculty teaching the workshops also serve as campus coordinators for the program.  Special thanks to Professors Peter Gregory, Jeff Suzuki, Matthew Auth, Mahdi Majidi-Zolbanin, Joseph Fera and Satyanand Singh.  Follow along at #CalculusBootcamp