Most of your mathematical life, you have known that pi is an irrational number somewhere between 3.1 and 3.2. But if we exchange the usual Euclidean norm for another norm, the geometry of the plane changes, including a change in the shape of circles and the associated value of pi. From this new vantage point, pi can be any of an infinite number of different values. What are these values? What does a pi-value indicate about its associated norm and vice versa? We will observe several surprising twists and turns and find interesting questions that are yet unanswered.

Cornelia Van Cott is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of San Francisco, where she has been for ten years. She received her B.S. in mathematics at Wheaton College (Wheaton, Illinois) and her Ph.D. at Indiana University. Outside of teaching math courses, she enjoys thinking about topology and working with children at math circles and summer math camps. Cornelia also serves on the leadership team for the San Francisco Math Teachers’ Circle.

Students in math classes frequently work under the assumption that reading is unnecessary since the instructor will explain everything in class. Meanwhile, instructors work under the assumption that their students won't (or can't) read and hence feel duty bound to explain everything in class. As long as everybody understands their role in this game of passive education, the students remain generally happy pretending to learn, and the teachers cringingly continue moving through content that they correctly conclude their students do not comprehend. In this talk, we explore what happened when several instructors decided to change the rules of the game, teaching the students how to read mathematical texts, and then requiring students to actually do it! In addition to summarizing the method, there will be lots of examples of successes and failures, links to an abundance of resources, and a case made that mathematics, as a student discipline, needs to recapture its role as a liberal art rather than a mechanical one.

Adam Glesser received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from UC Santa Cruz and has taught at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland), Suffolk University (Boston), and, for the last seven years, California State University, Fullerton. His primary research area is in the representation theory of finite groups, though in recent years he has branched out to do research in complex numbers, curvature, differential equations, affine geometry, math education, and even wrote a book for his department's Business Calculus course. In his free time, Adam enjoys coaching baseball and playing board games. In fact, his love of board games is so strong, he designed a freshmen level course that teaches problem solving through board games just so that he had an excuse to play games as school!

The implementation of AB705 will increase the number of sections of Introductory Statistics across the state. Many instructors who have taught statistics will most likely find themselves teaching it in the near future. We all will be teaching students who show up in our classes without having taken the traditional prerequisite courses. The challenges we face are daunting, but this is an opportunity to reexamine how this course is taught.

Join us as George Woodbury shares his thoughts on “Statistics – Then and Now.” Among the topics will be creating an active learning environment, effective use of technology, early introduction of inferential techniques, and new inferential techniques (randomization, resampling, simulation, bootstrapping). There will be time for questions and answers.

Student Poster Winners

CMC³ welcomes community college mathematics students to participate in the student poster session at each Fall Conference. Scholarships are awarded to all participants as well as the winning posters. This year’s participants did amazing work.

CMC³ Foundation Legacy Donor Award

The 2018 Foundation Legacy Donor Award was awarded to Charles Barnett of Las Positas College.

Invitation to Exhibitors

CMC³ welcomes all vendors who would like to set up a booth. Information on doing so is available here.

Schedule of the Saturday Concurrent Sessions

Presentations can be found below.

Future CMC³ Conferences

Information about future conferences is available.