Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

First Diffusion Course: "The Structure Of Language As A Connection Between Artificial Intelligence, Information And Ethics", Dioneia Monte-Serrat

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

From August 22nd to November 21st, the first Diffusion Course on “The structure of language as a connection between artificial intelligence, information and ethics” will take place on a Thursday of each month, in Ribeirao Preto, Brazil. You are cordially invited to sign up for in-person classes and join other researchers and students on this course.

Prime Motivation Of Eratosthenes, Pamela L. King

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The sieve of Eratosthenes is used as a metaphor for the concept of people falling through the social safety net, and people who were once excluded, making efforts to increase inclusiveness.

Building Communities Of Care For Equity, Justice, And Culturally Responsive Practice In Mathematics Education, Nicole Fletcher, B Waid

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Teaching is widely considered one of the “caring professions,” but conceptualizations of care and how care is put into practice in education are not universal. In this article, we draw from a range of perspectives on care that integrate supportive interpersonal relationships, high expectations, and culturally relevant theories of critical care, as well as Queer Theory and Disability Justice, to explore the application of these ideas in mathematics education. We identify key elements for building communities of care in mathematics education contexts: co-constructing community agreements, redefining participation, shifting traditional power structures, collaborative problem solving, and building networks of care beyond …

The Limits Of Data Science, David E. Drew

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Data science can contribute valuable predictions in diverse fields. But I write to express some concerns and red flags. I suggest that data science is being oversold. This article contains three questions that I believe data science must address as this new discipline matures. Is data science significantly different from statistics? This is a question that has haunted the field since the term first was introduced. By creating algorithms based on current societal decision rules that may be biased, even bigoted, does data science lock in and exacerbate inequality? Scholars have identified a continuum from data to information to knowledge …

Finding Your Mathematical Roots: Inclusion And Identity Development In Mathematics, Linda Mcguire

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This paper details a semester-long course project that has been successfully adapted for use in mathematics courses ranging from introductory level, general-education classes to advanced courses in the mathematics major. Through creating aspirational mathematical family trees and writing mathematical autobiographies, this assignment is designed to help battle belonging uncertainty, to challenge students to self-situate in relation to the history of mathematical and scientific knowledge, and to make visible a student’s developing identity in mathematics and, more broadly, in STEM.

The construction and scaffolding of the project, assignments, examples of student work, foundational readings, assessment and outcomes, and adaptation strategies for …

Fitting A Covid-19 Model Incorporating Senses Of Safety And Caution To Local Data From Spartanburg County, South Carolina, D. Chloe Griffin, Amanda Mangum

CODEE Journal

Common mechanistic models include Susceptible-Infected-Removed (SIR) and Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Removed (SEIR) models. These models in their basic forms have generally failed to capture the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic's multiple waves and do not take into account public policies such as social distancing, mask mandates, and the ``Stay-at-Home'' orders implemented in early 2020. While the Susceptible-Vaccinated-Infected-Recovered-Deceased (SVIRD) model only adds two more compartments to the SIR model, the inclusion of time-dependent parameters allows for the model to better capture the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic when surveillance testing was common practice for a large portion of the population. We find …

Odes And Mandatory Voting, Christoph Borgers, Natasa Dragovic, Anna Haensch, Arkadz Kirshtein, Lilla Orr

CODEE Journal

This paper presents mathematics relevant to the question whether voting should be mandatory. Assuming a static distribution of voters’ political beliefs, we model how politicians might adjust their positions to raise their share of the vote. Various scenarios can be explored using our app at https: //centrism.streamlit.app/. Abstentions are found to have great impact on the dynamics of candidates, and in particular to introduce the possibility of discontinuous jumps in optimal candidate positions. This is an unusual application of ODEs. We hope that it might help engage some students who may find it harder to connect with the more customary …

Ode Models Of Wealth Concentration And Taxation, Bruce Boghosian, Christoph Borgers

CODEE Journal

We refer to an individual holding a non-negligible fraction of the country’s total wealth as an oligarch. We explain how a model due to Boghosian et al. can be used to explore the effects of taxation on the emergence of oligarchs. The model suggests that oligarchs will emerge when wealth taxation is below a certain threshold, not when it is above the threshold. The underlying mechanism is a transcritical bifurcation. The model also suggests that taxation of income and capital gains alone cannot prevent the emergence of oligarchs. We suggest several opportunities for students to explore modifications of the model.

Why Is Grant Lake A Reservoir? A Brief Geological And Human History, From The Pleistocene To The Present, Robert B. Marks

Eastern Sierra History Journal

Drawing on a range of archival resources and illustrative material, Prof. Marks probes why and how Grant Lake in the Eastern Sierra of California became a reservoir. The process is long and involved, and has much to do with a remote and ancient lake ultimately being developed to serve the water needs of the distant city of Los Angeles.

Exploring Set-Theoretic Practices Of Youth Engagement In Connective Journalism: What We Lose In School-Mathematical Descriptions, Alexandra R. Aguilar, Emma C. Gargroetzi, Lynne M. Zummo, Emma P. Bene

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Analyzing youth video submissions regarding COVID-19 to KQED’s ‘Let’s Talk About the Election’ website, we explore the mathematics these youth engaged in through their submissions without creating any explicit connection to school mathematical concepts or standards. Our focus is the students’ construction of sets (e.g. sets of nurses, doctors, American workers), as a means of creating connection with voters and other media authors through Marchi and Clark’s (2021) construct of connective journalism. We observe these youth constructing sets of varying sizes and reflecting on how these sets are contextualized within a larger political dialogue. We also attempt to rewrite part …

No Simple Formula: Navigating Tensions In Teaching Postsecondary Social Justice Mathematics, Alexa W. C. Lee-Hassan

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Instructors of Social Justice Mathematics (SJM) have shared important insights into the powerful potential of connecting classroom mathematics with authentic data about social justice topics, but they have also warned about the harm such teaching can cause when done poorly. In this article, I consider what is necessary to teach SJM at the postsecondary level. I share research that has supported me in learning to teach SJM and highlight challenges that are particular to doing this work in postsecondary contexts. I then describe my experiences navigating the central tensions of this work while honoring its complexity.

Responsible Data Science For Genocide Prevention, Victor Piercey

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The term "genocide" emerged out of an effort to describe mass atrocities committed in the first half of the 20th century. Despite a convention of the United Nations outlawing genocide as a matter of international law, the problem persists. Some organizations (including the United Nations) are developing indicator frameworks and “early-warning” systems that leverage data science to produce risk assessments of countries where conflict is present. These tools raise questions about responsible data use, specifically regarding the data sources and social biases built into algorithms through their training data. This essay seeks to engage mathematicians in discussing these concerns.

#Disruptjmm: Online Social Justice Advocacy And Community Building In Mathematics, Rachel Roca, Carrie Diaz Eaton, Drew Lewis, Joseph Hibdon, Stefanie Marshall

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In 2019, \#DisruptJMM, a Twitter hashtag, began circulating after an Inclusion/Exclusion blog by Dr. Piper H pointing to the need to make commonplace conversations about human suffering in the Joint Mathematics Meetings (JMM). While the \#DisruptJMM hashtag has been used since 2019, the vast majority of use was in the JMM 2020 meetings. Twitter hashtags are used by activists to push forward conversations, join communities around a single idea, and create change. In this article, we draw on frameworks from community building seen in other equity and inclusion advocacy hashtags such as \#GirlsLikeUs [7] to qualitatively code and analyze tweets …

Mathematics And Society: Towards Critical Mathematics Research And Education, Tian An Wong, Carrie Diaz Eaton, Rachel Roca, Nancy Rodriguez

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Collaboration Between Science And Art Through A Special International Symposium For Ecosystem Health And Sustainability, Changwoo Ahn Dr.

The STEAM Journal

The collaborations between ecosystem restoration and art practices was epitomized by the eco-artist Jackie Brookner who said: “it is not a matter of the scientists providing the hard-core research and artists the soft outreach; rather, the dynamics engendered in the space between disciplines is full of information necessary to solve complex problems at the systemic level”. This paper reviews and summaries the goals, activities, and lessons learned from a special symposium, which was held at the 12^th INTECOL (International Congress of Ecology) conference in Beijing, China, August 21 through 25, 2017, where about 3000 people attended from 70 countries. …

Students Arts Participation Increases Stem Motivation Via Self-Efficacy, Stephen M. Dahlem

The STEAM Journal

This work found that there exists a correlation between student motivation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and student participation in the arts during high school with self-efficacy being a mediator. STEM is an important component of student success from a broad, national, perspective, as well as from a domain-specific point of view. The results of this work may provide aid to teachers, parents, administrators, and even students seeking to find ways to increase student motivation and performance in the STEM subjects. Additionally, this work may be of interest to advocates of the arts. This quantitative correlational study was …

Challenge-Based Learning & Steam Curriculum, Diana Lockwood

The STEAM Journal

STEAM education is being integrated into elementary schools as a way to engage more students in creativity, hands-on learning, and problem-based learning also referred to as Challenge-Based-Learning (CBL). This article focuses on elementary educators’ curriculum design for STEAM and presenting students with open-ended questions phrased as a challenge as a way to raise student interest and achievement (DeJarnette, 2018; Hunter-Doniger, 2018). When students received challenges to solve, they felt more open to sharing their ideas since there was more than one potential right answer (DeJarnette, 2018; Drake, 2012). When implementing CBL, teachers act as facilitators using a constructivist approach as …

Where Do Babies Come From?, Marcio Luis Ferreira Nascimento

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

According to European folklore, popularized by a fairy tale, storks are responsible for bringing babies to new parents. This probably came from observation in certain European countries, such as Norway, Netherlands or Germany, that storks nesting on the roofs of households were believed to bring good luck, as the possibility of new births. People love stories, but correlation simply means that there is a relationship between two factors that tells nothing about the direction of said relationship, if any. Another possibility is simple coincidence. Let us say that it’s possible that one factor causes another. It’s also possible that the …

The Eu's Capacity To Lead The Transatlantic Alliance In Ai Regulation, Varun Roy, Vignesh Sreedhar

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

In the face of Chinese advances in AI in terms of technological prowess and influence, there has been a call for collaboration between the EU and the US to create a foundation for AI governance based on shared democratic beliefs. This paper maps out the EU, US, and Chinese approaches to AI development and regulation as we analyze the capacity of the US and EU to establish international standards for AI regulation through channels such as the TTC. As the EU rolled out a proportionate and risk-based approach to ensure stricter regulation for high-risk AI technologies, it laid the foundation …

Beyond Ethics: Considerations For Centering Equity-Minded Data Science, Nathan Alexander, Carrie Diaz Eaton, Anelise H. Shrout, Belin Tsinnajinnie, Krystal Tsosie

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In this paper, we utilize duoethnography - a research method in which practitioners discursively interrogate the relationships between culture, context, and the mechanisms which shape individual autobiographical experiences - to explore what may be beyond ethics in the context of data science. Although ethical frameworks have the ability to reflect cultural priorities, a singular view of ethics, as we explore, often fails to speak to the multiple and diverse priorities held both within and across institutional spaces. To that end, this paper explores multiple perspectives, epistemologies, and worldviews that can collectively push researchers towards considerations of a data science education …

Towards Pedagogy Supporting Ethics In Modelling, Marie Oldfield

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Education for concepts such as ethics and societal responsibility that are critical in building robust and applicable mathematical and statistical models do currently exist in isolation but have not been incorporated into the mainstream curricula at the school or university level. This is partially due to the split between fields (such as mathematics, statistics, and computer science) in an educational setting but also the speed with which education is able to keep up with industry and its requirements. I argue that principles and frameworks of socially responsible modelling should begin at school level and that this would mean that ethics …

Mathematics For The Masses: Door-To-Door Missionaries Of Math And Twelve-Step Recovery Programs, Daniel S. Helman

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Conversion of strangers, or proselytizing, is a feature of a range of groups for religious, organizational and other aims. In twelve-step recovery programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, belief in a higher power is a requirement for working the steps to recovery. People are encouraged to find a higher power of their own understanding. This paper presents a model for using mathematics as a higher power, and shows how recovery works with mathematics in that role instead of a more traditional higher power such as God. A contemplative definition of math is given along with a description of a three-categoried epistemology: …

Decisions, Decisions: How Should The Votes Be Counted?, Michael J. Caulfield

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

It is a simple matter for the members of a group to decide among two options. When there are three or more options among which to choose, the situation is much more complicated. This is precisely what faces the electorate each time there are more than two candidates running for a single office. And while there is debate over which voting method should be used, there is wide agreement over the method that should not be used: plurality, the most common approach taken in the United States. This article presents a simple classroom activity which provides students the opportunity to …

Covid-19, Vaccines, And Decision Theory, Michael A. Lewis

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In this piece, I delve into some thoughts I've had about decision theory. These have been inspired by the vaccine rollout phase of the COVID-19 Pandemic. I focus on decision making under uncertainty, as it relates to the decision to get vaccinated or not.

Teiresias, Proportions, And Sexual Pleasure, Spyros Missiakoulis

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In this short article, I claim that Teiresias, the blind prophet of Apollo, in order to answer the question of whether “in sexual intercourse the woman had a larger share of pleasure than the man did”, measured the abstract concept of sexual pleasure and acted as a present-day scholar. With the help of numerical, not geometrical, proportions, he ended up with the conclusion “a man enjoyed one-tenth of the pleasure and a woman nine-tenths”.

The Glorious Past And The Ecologically Modern: A Guided Journey Through Reconstructions Of China In Rural Shanxi, Melinda Herrold-Menzies

EnviroLab Asia

The article traces an EnviroLab Asia research trip designed to learn how “traditional” music and “folk” dance had been used to transform a loose configuration of farms into an integrated organic agricultural cooperative. This trip was second part of a multi-pronged case-study project looking at music, agriculture and sustainability in Indonesia and China. The importance of this research trip was to build collaborative relationships with our colleagues in Shanxi so that we will be able to produce interdisciplinary research with multinational partners in the future.

Can’T Bear It! Employing Culturally Sensitive Initiatives To Reduce Bear Bile Demand In Northern Vietnam, Alicia Ngo, Shannon Randolph

EnviroLab Asia

Over the past 30 years, the combination of over-hunting, habitat loss, and increased bear bile demand has caused significant declines in Asiatic black bear (aka moon bear; Ursus thibetanus) and sun bear (Helarctos malayanus) populations. In Eastern medicine, bear bile is extracted from the gallbladders of bears and is then used to treat a wide range of inflammatory, liver, and degenerative ailments. However, the use of bear bile has had significant impacts on bear populations. Given that communities in Northern Vietnam have a lengthy history of using bear bile and bear bile is easily accessible, merely advocating …

Centering The Arts In Stem, Fay Cobb Payton

The STEAM Journal

A reflection on a STEAM initiative: NC State University Alumni and their children attended free STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) family workshops at D.H. Hill Library. This program was a collaboration between Dr. Fay Cobb Payton, professor of Information Systems/Technology and University Faculty Scholar at NC State, the NCSU Libraries, and Arts NC State

The Beautiful Math Of Everything And You Included, E. Ozie

The STEAM Journal

This a reflection on how there is beautiful math to everything. An author's interpretation of matrices and mechanics in its relationship to someone's identity.

Drawing Parallels In Art Science For Collaborative Learning: A Case Study, Karen Westland

The STEAM Journal

This research paper explores drawing as a tool to facilitate interdisciplinary practice. Outlined is the personal experience of PhD researcher [name removed] in their physics/craft research project, combined with thoughts and opinions from collaborators gathered through group discursive interviews. Interdisciplinary projects face interpersonal and conceptually ambiguous challenges which can be addressed through adopting drawing techniques for educational purposes. Findings highlight that drawing can assist across a breadth of applications as a learning tool for everyone, regardless of drawing ability, to improve the functionality of collaborative projects. Specifically, drawing combined with other communication techniques develops a performative communicative approach that enriches …