Mathematics of Social Justice

Update in the 3rd week

2006-09-12T21:23:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm in the third week of my writing course, and I have lots of work looming ahead, so this seems like a propitious moment to share my experiences to date. The course meets in two sections of 16 & 17 students in 75 minute periods on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The introductory module is an introduction to quantitative literacy (QL), for which the students are reading Mathematics and Democracy and What the Numbers Say and writing a personal assessment of their own quantitative literacy. The readings seem to be appreciated by the students, but it seems to be a minority of the class that is actually doing them. Despite this, the opportunity to share personal QL experiences has kept classroom discussions lively.

The time I spend teaching the students to write is substantial, and perhaps the big surprise to me in actually teacing the course. We are using the St. Martins Handbook as a writing text, and the students seem to need a great deal of assistance in writing.

I am creating a module, like the one for Fair Division, chronicling the assignments and the discussion questions I have worked up for class. I hope to post it when the module is finished next week, when the students hand in their personal QL assessment.

Course Module on Fair Division

2006-08-02T12:35:00.000-04:00

The result of the Fair Division Working Group's summer efforts is a module for the First-Year Seminar being taught at Lafayette in the fall. It is available as a pdf file through this link.

Annotated Bibliography -- How I did it

2006-07-06T11:52:00.000-04:00

It's been pointed out that folks might be interested in what I did to create the annotated bibliography. First of all, I used Google Scholar's forward citation linking to find 176 sources that cited Brams and Taylor's seminal book "Fair Division: From Cake-Cutting to Dispute Resolution." Then I went through that list and found the few that made connections to issues of social justice. Lafayette has hooks into Google Scholar that allow one to automatically search our collection for a source, and order it via ILL if we don't have it. Most articles recent enough to cite "Fair Division" (published in 1996) have abstracts available online, and many have full text available, as well. In any case it didn't take me more than a few hours to decide which of these 176 I thought were salient to our work. Lafayette also subscribes to RefWorks, which is an online citation management package that imports information (although not perfectly) from Google Scholar with a single click. So I have a RefWorks copy of my (unannotated) bibliography, if anyone is interested.

To create the annotated version, I chose to use LaTeX/BibTeX, including the handy application BibDesk (for Mac; can anyone suggest a good Windows analogue?). RefWorks exports (once again, not perfectly) to BibTeX format, so I was easily able to create an unannotated version of the bibliography. I found the skeleton for an annotated bibliography in LaTeX out in cyberspace; the key ingredient is the modified BibTeX style file that uses the annote field in a BibTeX record to create annotations in the LaTeX output. There is one small annoyance to this solution: in multi-paragraph annotations, a blank line is ignored; one must insert a "\par" command to cause a new paragraph.

Altogether this took about a day of my time. I was able to do so much that quickly mostly because of the ease of integration of Google Scholar, RefWorks, and BibTeX. The links here will make the job go more quickly, but in fairness, there aren't many other groups with topics narrow enough that the sources citing a single book will yield a reasonable survey. The blog post for 4 July includes a link to the workshop website page where there are links to the resulting *.pdf and *.bib files, but here are direct links from blog to files.

Fair Division Bibliography Posted

2006-07-04T00:22:00.000-04:00

I have finally gotten a draft bibliography on Fair Division together. It exists primarily as a BibTeX file, but non-LaTeX'ers will appreciate that it is easy to make a hard copy, which is posted as a pdf on the workshop web site. The link is on the Sample Curriculum page. Most of the work went into the bibliography, not the link. It's just a sentence or two below the list of topics covered near the top of the page.

Although the bibliography doesn't make this clear, there aren't many sources that make a solid connection between fair division, as expounded by Brams and Taylor, and social justice. Brams in particular has gone to great effort to attempt to cement a connection between these two, for instance in his 2004 article and his joint work with Denoon (Google puts his name in all lower-case letters). Right now, the most promising articles by other authors are by Gersbach (2004) and Haugestad (2003). The other articles cited are all either more mathematical or deal with fair division only tangentially.

I still haven't read all these materials; when I do I'll be able to make final judgements about what to include in my course, and hence in the module I'm preparing.

A Possible Exercise

2006-07-03T11:14:00.000-04:00

While cruising the web, I found the site for gapminder, a Swedish organization whose vision is "Making sense of the world by having fun with statistics!" The 2005 presentation on human development trends seems to fit that vision admirably. This is an excellent presentation that was given only slightly modified at the 2006 TED conference. The TED version includes some helpful suggestions for classroom activities to accompany the presenations, as well as a very helpful audio narrative. This is a great tool for understanding international development.

I was inspired by this to create the following exercise. I am not sure that I will use it in my class, as it leads in directions I don't intend to go. Nonetheless, it is thought-provoking, and raises clear issues of social justice. The problem from my point of view is that those issues are not ones I intend to cover in my course. Here is the exercise:

E X E R C I S E

Below are groups of countries, grouped by their 2003 child mortality rate. All the countries listed have child mortality of 1% or less, meaning that in all these countries, 99% (or more) of newborns live to 5 years old. In each group, the countries are listed from poorest to wealthiest, as measured by GDP per capita.

Try to list these groups from lowest child mortality rate to highest, and put the United States in its group.

Singapore, Sweden
Czech Rep, Slovenia, Spain, Italy, Japan, Iceland, Denmark, Norway
Korea, Portugal, Cyprus, Greece, Germany, France, Finland, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg
Malta, Israel, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Ireland
Malaysia, Poland, Croatia
Cuba, Slovakia, Hungary, United Arab Emirates
Chile, Estonia, Kuwait
Costa Rica

Answer: The groups are already in order from lowest to highest child mortality. The highest group has child mortality of 0.3%, and each successive group has higher child mortality by 0.1%. These numbers all seem very small, but realize the implications. Costa Rica has double the child mortality of Korea, or any of the other countries in Korea's group. This is not too surprising, given that Costa Rica's GDP per capita of $9,080 is slightly more than half of Korea's $17,000, and Korea is the poorest of the countries in its group.

Sadly, the United States falls in the group with Cuba. Cuba has GDP per capita of $5,400, while the United States has $35,500, close to seven times higher. The only other countries with GDP per capita higher than $30,000 are Ireland, Norway, and Luxembourg, and they all have substantially lower child mortality rates. Norway has half the child mortality rate of the US with roughly the same GDP per capita, and this is accomplished by several other, poorer countries, including the Czech Republic, which has a GDP per capita of $15,500, less than half that of the United States.

It is obvious that most/all of the countries that offer better survival prospects to their infants have national health insurance, indeed, very few countries with wealth comparable to the US do not. (Can anyone name one other than the US? I can't.) But the lurking variables in the situation lead in directions I am not familiar with. What are the leading causes of infant/toddler mortality? What steps are the countries with the best records taking? Why are they successful? What are the arguments against taking them in the US? All of these are fascinating questions that rise naturally from this simple exercise, and I can't answer any of them.

One tack I did briefly investigate: The issue of abortion. I found data on abortion from most of the countries mentioned in the exercise at http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/, and plotted abortion ratios against child mortality. (Abortion ratio is the number of abortions per thousand live births in a specified polity over a specified time period.) There is very little association at all between these two statistics. The association appeared to me to be slightly negative, but with strong outliers that would probably render the correlation positive. In short, there is not much here without considering the myriad other lurking variables (especially the level of legal access to abortion and the cultural/legal status of women more broadly) that affect the prevalence of unwanted pregnancy and the access to abortion as a means to end them. In general, abortions for the purpose of ending pregnancies that are expected to end in the birth of a child with serious health problems seem to be a small fraction of all abortions performed, and so there seems to be little association between abortion ratio and child mortality.

Update from the Fair Division Working Group

2006-06-16T17:07:00.000-04:00

Right now, the Fair Division working group is me with a little help from Ron (Thanks, Ron!), so the module we will develop is going to be for my first-year seminar course. That means the mathematical content will be minimal, but there will be some writing expected of the students. I intend to use the book "The Win-Win Solution: Guaranteeing Fair Shares to Everybody" by Steven J. Brams and Alan D. Taylor. The book was published in 1999, but I intend to use the copyright 2000 paperback edition published by W. W. Norton that lists for $14.95, and sells at Amazon for $9.72.

I haven't seen the book yet, but I have an idea of what it contains. The general idea is to divide up a prescribed collection of goods (or bads) amongst interested parties. The canonical example is dividing a cake and assigning the pieces to children. The primary goal for division method is to make the division (and assignment) envy-free, that is, each child believes that their piece of cake is at least as desirable as any other piece. For a uniform cake (and uniform children) this would mean all the pieces are the same size, but for a cake with different flavors that might appeal to different children, it might require sizes that are unequal. This also offers the possibility of _each_ party receiving a part that it perceives as "generous," that is, the child values the assigned piece with more than 1/n of the value of the entire cake, where n is the number of children.

When different parts of the cake are assigned different values by different children, the concept of Pareto-optimality comes into play, and here it is given the name efficiency. That is, we would like to maximize the total value that the parties assign to the pieces they receive. As one might expect, the constraint of envy-freeness might prevent the achievement of the Pareto-optimal solution, but it is often possible to optimize the total value within the constraint of envy-freeness.

A refinement of envy-freeness is an equitable distribution. The idea is to make each party's perceived value assignment equal. The books develops a technique called the adjusted winner process that results in a division between two parties that is envy-free, efficient, and equitable.

I haven't yet read about the technique, but I believe that it will be the central topic of study for the module. this leaves the issue of a writing assignment. Two general approaches occur to me. One is personal, like, "Describe a dispute over division from your own experience. How salient where the issues raised by this book: envy-freeness, equitableness, efficiency? How was your dispute resolved? Describe the fairness or lack of fairness of the resolution from your point of view. Would one of the procedures described in this book have made the resolution more fair? What difficulties would you foresee in implementing one of the book's procedures in resolving a similar dispute in the future?"

That's fairly rough, but it is the start of an assignment I imagine that many students would find worth writing about. To make the link to social justice, the assignment might deal with a social issue, like salaries for hourly workers versus salaries for their managers and executives in a corporation, or a political dispute, like the Groton CT eminent domain case, or the Israeli/Palestinian land dispute. I believe that these would require more research by the students, and would require more exposition. This might be a good thing, depending on the goal of the module. I expect to come up with a couple of examples of this sort of assignment, although I also expect making appropriately motivating assignments will be more difficult in this case.

RadicalMath Powerpoint Online

2006-06-03T15:55:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone.

Just wanted to thank you all again for a very interesting and informative workshop. I look forward to working with all of you in the near future.

The powerpoint presentation I gave, "Integrating Social Justice into a High School Math Class" is now on my website (www.radicalmath.org) if you are interested in downloading it. The site itself will be getting a major overhaul in the next week or two.

Best,
Jonathan
info@radicalmath.org
917.288.7364

www.RadicalMath.org

An Open Invitation

2006-06-02T10:55:00.000-04:00

The workshop last week at Lafayette College was a valuable experience that participants enjoyed and profited from. If you are interested in future workshops or the other activities described below, please email me. Feel free to pass this message on to others you believe might be interested; the workshop group will be happy to work with other faculty committed to its goals.

The workshop participants have broken up into 10 working groups. Groups are charged with convening sometime between now and June 15 to delegate responsibilities, including choosing a corresponding clerk, who will report on the group's progress. Further, these working groups have committed to creating a first draft literature review in their field by Jun 30, and to creating at least one curriculum module in that field by August 7. These results will be announced and made available via this workshop blog and/or via the workshop web site at http://www.lafayette.edu/~math/Rob/MathOfSJ/

If you are interested in participating in the activities of a working group, please contact me. We welcome participation in the workshop's work this summer, and we look forward to engaging more interested faculty in the community the workshop has fostered.

Here are the working group topics

Access to and Quality of Education (especially Math Ed), 10 participants
Wealth Distribution and Income Inequality, 6 participants
Population Growth, 5 participants
Measurement of Social Indices, 4 participants
Criminal Justice, 3 participants
Methodological Issues, 3 participants
Voting, Apportionment, & Social Choice, 3 participants
Fair Division and Apportionment, 3 participants
Environment, 2 participants
Social Organization & Health Outcomes, 1 participant
Resource Reviews, 5 participants

follow-up to Lafayette conversations

2006-05-30T10:40:00.000-04:00

In conversations at the workshop, I promised to relay two things to the group. The first is for other PowerPoint skeptics: the Gettysburg Address as a PP presentation. It can be found at http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~russell/gettysburg
or reprinted in The Cognitive Style of Power Point by Edward R. Tufte.

The second is the "Course Response Form" now used at Middlebury College. It replaces the old "Course Evaluation" form. (The change came out of a long deliberative process, during which the question of a QL class for faculty and administrators came to mind often.) A scan of the form can be found here; ignore the big X's. I'd be interested in people's comments. These things often reflect the culture of an institution -- Middlebury's is quite different from the one I passed out during my year at the U.S. Naval Academy! -- and in this case the change is meant in part to shift emphasis away from just one model of teaching toward the question of learning.

PSB

T minus eleven

2006-05-29T22:16:00.000-04:00

So for those of you who may have forgotten, I start teaching my godawful math for people who hate math course tomorrow morning, and I'm really hoping to put some of this MSJ stuff to work to keep us all from being bored to tears. Right now the plan is to do basically the same mathematics as always (voting theory, apportionment, statistics, finance...), but to put a SJ spin on it wherever possible. To that end, I've tried to put together some readings about the SJ issues involved, and to rewrite some of the projects. Alas, I have had very limited success on both counts. The problem with the projects, I think, can be resolved with more time (and help... right, Steve?), but the problem with the readings is trickier. All the material I can find that is MSJ-related is either (a) for teachers, and really not appropriate for the students to read themselves, or (b) almost wholly devoid of mathematical content. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions? Know of any counterexamples? Please...?

Workshop Evaluations: Open-ended questions

2006-05-29T09:58:00.000-04:00

Here is a summary of the responses to the last four questions on the evaluation questionnaire. The question posed is followed by analysis of the responses it generated.

8. Which portions of the workshop were most helpful to you, and why?

The most frequent response to this question was the invited talk given by Larry Lesser of the University of Texas, El Paso. It was mentioned by 12 of the 23 respondents, or just over half. A close second, mentioned by 10 respondents, was the presentation made by Jonathan Osler.

Three aspects of the workshop were mentioned by 7 respondents; they were: (i) the opportunity to meet and interact with other participants, (ii) the library session led by Terese Heidenwolf and Amy Abruzzi, and (iii) "everything." Beside these indications of blanket approval, virtually every aspect of the workshop was mentioned or inferred by at least one respondent.

Here is one memorable response to this question:
"All of it--especially interaction with other participants! I'm very impressed with the local talent (mathematicians, recently tenured English Prof., librarians, Bonnie...)" Although the workshop had a shoestring budget, I am fortunate to be at an institution that provides exceptional resources, and I am happy to have this confirmation of my confidence that they came together to provide a key component of the workshop.

9. Which portions of the workshop were least helpful to you, and why?

This question drew a few responses of "nothing," and fewer responses overall than the preceding question. Four aspects of the workshop came in a tie as most commonly mentioned as least helpful, although each drew only 4 negative responses. Dennis's talk spoke to issues that some participants (none of whom came from community colleges) did not find salient to their situations. Similarly, several participants mentioned that they were not considering using writing in their courses, and so didn't get much out of John and Bianca's panel. Another least-helpful session according to multiple respondents was the blogging session. This is natural, since the blog ended up not serving the purpose I intended. A final common response to this question regarded the placement and structure of the small group discussion session. I address this issue below, in the analysis of question 11.

10. How would you like to see the work begun at the conference continued?

The most popular response to this question was additional workshops, with 13 respondents requesting more, and some specifically requesting at least one more workshop before arranging for a conference session where the results could be presented. Such a conference session was the next most popular request, with 8 respondents. All other respondents requested all or some part of the workshop's final outcome: working groups developing curricular modules and the entire group staying in contact at least until this process is completed.

11. If there were to be another course development workshop, how would you alter the structure and content of this one to improve it?

The most common request was for more time at the workshop. Most of these requests were coupled with a desire to begin the actual module development at the workshop, but others said that they needed time to digest all that the were exposed to in the workshop. The decision to keep the workshop short was made out of a desire to be economical, both with money and with participants' time. Given the breadth and strength of interest in the topic, I might have asked participants for both more time and more money, and made the workshop last a full three, or even four days.

Two other issues were raised less frequently, but deserve consideration: First, that the breadth of pedagogical sessions (writing, service-learning, library) might have been replaced with sessions devoted to the content of the modules to be developed. The decision on my part to offer sessions on pedagogy rather than content was primarily an economical one: I knew of local talent who could speak effectively to the pedagogical issues, while professionals prepared to speak to content are few and far between. It was cheaper to address pedagogy than talent. With a full year to prepare and awareness that I might spend a few more dollars, I would probably naturally move in the direction these participants indicate.

Second, that there needed to be more opportunities for group discussion, particularly in small groups. This is another legitimate request that might be fulfilled with more time, or fewer panels/presentations. Looking back, we might have been served better by more presentations on the first day and more time to talk on the last two days. This is a rookie mistake.

In closing this post, I'd like to share a delightfully positive unsolicited comment included at the bottom of one evaluation: "This was the most fun, energetic, inspiring workshop of this type that I have ever attended." Thanks for sharing this. The workshop has been a transformative experience for me, as well. Here's hoping that the energy and inspiration keeps us all going through the hard work of module creation this summer, and beyond.

Workshop Evaluations: Multiple response questions

2006-05-27T20:14:00.000-04:00

Here are the evaluation questions and the responses from 23 of the 26 participants.

QUESTIONS
1. My experiences at the workshop will help me offer a better version of the course I had mind when I signed up.
2. I learned about the applications of mathematics to issues of social justice from the workshop.
3. I learned about the importance of quantitative literacy in achieving social justice at the workshop.
4. The workshop exposed me to useful pedagogical techniques, some of which I hope to apply to the course I am designing.
5. Acquaintances fostered by the workshop will help me offer a better course.
6. At the workshop, I learned about resources that will aid me in designing my course.
7. I plan to create a course module for inclusion in the collection being assembled for the workshop.

RESPONSES


Question Strongly                        Strongly   No
Number    Agree   Agree Neutral Disagree Disagree Answer
   1        16       4     1                         2
   2        13       8     1                         1
   3         7      12     3                         1
   4        10      13
   5        18       5
   6        20       3

           Yes      No Not Sure
   7        15             7                         1

NOTES
1. The only Neutral response and one No Answer response to Question 1 were because the participants didn't have a course in mind when they signed up for the workshop.
2. One participant gave no response to Questions 1-3, indicating that s/he has no control over the content of courses s/he teaches.
3. The participant with no response to Question 7 indicated that s/he will be doing book reviews rather than a module.

INTERPRETATION
This data strongly suggests that participants found the workshop a success. Overall participants agreed that the workshop generally achieved the goals measured by the evaluation. In particular, no one disagreed with any of the statements offered.

It is clear that participants found the most successful aspect of the workshop to be offering opportunities for participants to learn about resources, meet one another, and improve their courses. At the same time, they found the least successful aspect to be conveying the importance of quantitative literacy in achieving social justice. Looking back at the workshop, these are entirely appropriate conclusions to draw, and they suggest a natural way to improve the next workshop; find more speakers and activities that address quantitative literacy as (ahem) social capital. (Sociologists were just the folks we needed to leaven the mathematical loaf, don't you think?) Participants overall agreed that the workshop succeeded quite well at conveying applications of math to issues of social justice, and exposing folks to pedagogical techniques. This agreement, while clear, was not as strong as that associated with the three strongest responses.

Conference Announcement

2006-05-27T15:40:00.000-04:00

Larry Lesser passed this on to me as I drove him to his lodgings Wednesday evening. There will be the 3rd International Conference on Education, Labor, and Emancipation at the University of Texas, El Paso this fall (October or November, Larry wasn't sure, and I can't find a conference web site). Larry felt like this would be a good venue for presenting the kind of work people are doing, and of course it would offer presenters a chance to talk with Larry at greater length. 150-word proposals for presentations are due May 31; that's next Wednesday!

Update: Larry has provided me with this link to the conference web site, http://academics.utep.edu/Default.aspx?tabid=28992.
The conference runs September 28 to October 1.

After the conference ends, the real work begins

2006-05-25T09:37:00.000-04:00

Terese Heidenwolf, heidenwt@lafayette.edu
Amy Abruzzi, abruzzia@lafayette.edu

Introduction:

Lafayette FYS (first year seminar) has had library/research component since 1992.

Three things to keep in mind about first year students using the library:

Not unusual for student not to have experience using the library for research
Most of them have never seen a scholarly journal article. Start with:
- What is a scholarly journal article?
- How do you find them?
Evaluation of sources – they interpret as biased vs unbiased information

Because they don’t have much experience beyond web searching, we start with that and then introduce library resources.

Instructor had students create bibliography without any instruction. Most submit web sites, and most are bad sources. Then during library session, they evaluate the sources and the students are very critical of the sites. Then the conversation moves to if these are bad, how do we find better sources.

Students get hung up with the idea of biased information and that certain perspectives are bad, not realizing that all things written from a certain point of view.

One common problem with students designing projects is that they develop their idea for the project then begin looking for data only to find the data doesn’t exist.

Challenge them to begin thinking first about: Who would collect the data, what they would collect and why they would collect this particular data set.

Popular press articles to spark conversation:

Roberts, Sam. "A Book for People Who Love Numbers." New York Times, Feb. 22, 2006, p. E1. Available via LexisNexis

Schwarz, Norbert. "How Question Order Affects Answers." Michigan Today, Fall 2001.

Simpson, Glenn R. "Educated Guess: Sampling Is Taboo, But the Census Does Plenty of Imputing." Wall Street Journal, August 30, 2001, p. A1.

Kulish, Nicholas. "The 2000 Count: Why the Census Omitted Some Intriguing Questions." Wall Street Journal, February 14, 2001, p. B1

Assignment ideas:

Annotated bibliography rather than long paper worked well. They had to think about the audience and assess the sources they were choosing.

Invited librarian in to help with citation and location of resources. Improved student work significantly.

Even short working exercises force them to apply their research skills, otherwise they really don’t understand.

Beyond Math:

Asking us to expand our horizons beyond our discipline. Forces us to go into other databases and sources for other disciplines to combine the math with the social aspect.

Expanded Academic ASAP

Exercise:
Social justice and cancer pulls up only 5
Look at the references for the articles to find common words to continue searching.
Use advanced search to search:

social or environment* (wildcard) AND
justice or equit* or inequit* or disparit* AND
cancer

WorldCat

Catalog of books, videos, manuscripts, and other materials held by libraries across the country. Doesn’t index at the article level.

Specialized databases:

Web of Science

Scans footnotes and will send alerts to you when an article is cited in a new article.

CiteSeer <http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/> is free. Scientific Literature Digital Library incorporating autonomous citation indexing, awareness and tracking, citation context, related document…

Numeric data searches:
Race and Income:
US census http://www.census.gov/
Finest breakdown usually is released several years after collection

American community survey

National health surveys

Statistical abstract of the US
County level is smallest, mainly state and national
Tell for each table what document information taken from

FedStats http://www.fedstats.gov

Look to large research institutions

Lafayette’s statistics pages: http://ref.library.lafayette.edu/wr_home.htm

Additional search tips:

Using AND, OR, NOT
Select indexes to limit
Limiting search

So where do we go from here:

Platform ideas

Blackboard
- Negative is that it’s difficult to get content out of
Blog platform
Wiki
- Software allows anyone to edit anything
- Examples:
  - Wikipedia http://www.wikipedia.org
  - Sensei’s Library http://senseis.xmp.net
MAA special interest group
- Sigma: special interest group of the MAA
- Limits to mathematicians
MathDL - digital
- In need of content

Next courses of action:
Continue conversation: needs threads
Module development
Post resources
Search capability
Who is going to do what?
Who hosts (backend) of information?
Internal vs how we relate to the greater whole

Sharing from talk and listen:
Decisions we can make now, decisions we can make later
Blackboard: we know, can use now
Stay simple: keep with Blogger and then do sub groups for
People don’t stumble across Blackboard
Advantage that we’re familiar with it.
Link in Blogger to Blackboard?

Sample module

2006-05-25T06:52:00.000-04:00

Overview
This sample module should provide a brief introduction to blogging.

General learning objectives

Participants will learn what a blog is and how it can be used for collaboration beyond the Mathematics of Social Justice conference.
Participants will create their own blogger account, and experience posting and reply functions.

Introduction
The term blog is a shortening of the term weblog. In it most basic form it is microcontent arranged in reverse chronological order. This content is prodominately text but does include hyperlinking and sometimes images. Posts often allow commenting by users and creates a space for conversation.

Assignments/learning activities
Using this interactive interface, take a few minutes to brainstorm different uses of blogs and blogging. Move the existing uses (or create your own) to the appropriate cell of the matrix. Print your results for later reflection.

Create an account on Blogger. Explore the interface and make an introductory post.

Resources

Educational Blogging by Stephen Downes, Educause Review (2004)
The process of blogging—of reading online, engaging a community, and reflecting it online—is a process of bringing life into learning.
Why do academics blog? blog
entry by Elizabeth Lane Lawley. 8 Feb 2005
The academic contributions of blogging? entry by Eszter Hargittai on Crooked Timber

An introduction - Attenpt III

2006-05-23T16:41:00.000-04:00

Hello,
After some frustrated attempts at sending you a note, I am hoping this will reach all of you. It has been an exiting day!
I have been really exited about the wealth of knowledge and experiences I have been hearing. It makes me feel so good to share some of my ideas without having to explain much.
Thank you!!

Questions from Day One

2006-05-23T16:40:00.000-04:00

Since I've already introduced myself, I thought I'd post some of the questions I've come up with as a result of the discussions we've had today. These are things I'd like to think about more, and hear other people's thoughts on:

1. We like to say that you need mathematics for many things. Is this really true? Most of the examples I can think of (cooking, shopping, loans, checkbooks, etc.) are actually examples of arithmetic, and those that are not (calculating a mortgage payment, for example) are things that people do not actually need to be able to do for themselves. Are there arguments that can be made for mathematics other than arithmetic that the average person will actually need?

2. Can we quantify the value of quantitative literacy? Viktor said today in his keynote that "to be a successful social activist, you need quantitative skills." What data do we have to back this up? Or even anecdotal evidence?

3. How do you teach this stuff without your own views coming through, and is this even desirable?

4. How do you teach metacognition?

Chris Goff

2006-05-23T16:32:00.000-04:00

Hi-

I'm at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA. Before that, I was a "teaching postdoc" at the University of Arizona for 3 years. Before that, I spent 6 years at UC Santa Cruz (gorgeous campus) working on my PhD in Math. I'm originally from San Antonio, TX, and went to undergrad in Austin, at the gigantic UT.

The University of the Pacific (which used to be "UOP" but is now "Pacific") is a student-centered, comprehensive university in California's agriculture-rich Central Valley. We have a business school, a school of international studies, an engineering school, a pharmacy school, and a school of education, in addition to "The College," which houses the liberal arts and sciences, all on the Stockton capmus of about 4500 students. Also, we have a law school in Sacramento and a dental school in San Francisco. We have about 50 math majors total, several of which are double-majors in engineering and applied math. I have taught or will teach soon: Calculus I, II, and III, Precalculus, Linear Algebra, Abstract Algebra, Real Analysis, and our Intro to Abstract Math course.

This workshop on the Mathematics of Social Justice is really interesting to me. I don't have a lot of experience with social justice issues, but I'm looking forward to learning about them and ways to make them part of a lot of mathematics courses, especially for general education. I'm also looking forward to meeting everyone and keeping in touch as we plan our courses.

Chris

Ethics in Science and Mathematics

2006-05-23T16:31:00.000-04:00

I am interested in creating a one semester "Ethics in Science and Mathematics" course. All too often our students leave their undergraduate years without having discussed the complex issues that scientists face in their professional lives. Who will use my work? How will it be used? Who will benefit by it? Who could be harmed? Are their environmental costs? Do scientists have a responsibility to understand current political issues surrounding their work? More broadly, do scientists have a responsibility to be well informed about broader cultural issues? Once you make a discovery, do you have a special responsibility to get involved in how it is used (or not used)?

In John McFee's "Rising From the Plains," he relates how a geologist discovered oil deposits in the Yellowstone caldera. He struggled with publishing his find knowing that it would lead to exploration and possible development. He finally decided it was his scientific responsibility to publish his work, and then believed he should "let the chips fall where they may." What if he had published his work, then publicly proclaimed, "and they'll develop it over my dead body." Would he be crossing a line that scientists should not venture beyond? From an ethical standpoint (outside of scientific protocal?) was he obligated to express this opinion if this view truly reflected how he felt?

Victor's First day at Conference

2006-05-23T16:30:00.000-04:00

I have heard a lot of exciting ideas today. A big project would be to develop a training program to support community based after school tutoring programs (ex. at Churches, Youth Centers). Would want to bring in Sociology, Education, School of Social Work and the Civic Engagement Office. We would need to meet with community groups and school district to explore whether there is an interest in this. There could be a research component (for Ed, Sociology students/faculty): does this type of program impact student achievement.

What would be the tie in for math students? They could do tutoring. Math Ed students could help develop the curriculum for parents/community people. Not clear yet how this could tie into the activities of a math course. Maybe independent study project for students or for my math education course.

MSJ Faculty with related activities: Raphael, Allan, Kerry.

Introduction from Laura Moore

2006-05-23T16:29:00.000-04:00

It is a pleasure working with everyone at this first-ever Mathematics of Social Justice workshop. I am hoping to incorporate several concepts into my sociology courses at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland. Since my specialization is in stratification and I teach statistics for sociology and social work students, this workshop is a good fit for me. My goal is to revise the statistics course I teach to be more applied and project -oriented and to incorporate quantitative analysis more in other courses.

Hi, I'm Chawne!

2006-05-23T16:28:00.000-04:00

Hey there!

I teach with Rob Root at Lafayette College in Easton, PA (45 miles north of Philadelphia and 80 miles west of New York City). It's a small liberal arts and engineering college of ~2100 students. We are fortunate to have a large math department (of 19!) filled with professors who are passionate about teaching our students.

I have been at Lafayette for six years and recently earned tenure and promotion. My research is in ordered algebraic structures and general topology; my upper-level teaching is in linear and abstract algebra, although different flavors of calculus are my mainstays. When I'm not doing math, I can be found engaged in textile arts.

My interest in this conference and blog stems from my activist parents and my fundamental need to make my teaching and service relevant. I am not developing a particular course at the moment, but am here to gather ideas and provide support to Rob. In my second-year seminar on Property Rights, I do have a segment on taxation that hinges on students' ability to discern quantitative differences and engage in service-learning.

Through the Internal Revenue Service, we volunteer in locations all over the Lehigh Valley filling out tax returns for those in need of the service. We are trained and supervised by the IRS, who accepts liability for possible errors. This leaves us free to concentrate on the people and the data that we engage with. Some of my students connected with their clients for on-going discussions, while others just liked the service for the chance to see more of the area than just the College Hill. They all take away a better sense of the range of incomes that people live on and a mechanism for viewing economic fairness.

It's been a pleasure meeting all of you and getting to hear about your interests and endeavors. I look forward to many great conversations here and in the future.

introduction

2006-05-23T16:27:00.002-04:00

Hi Everyone,

My goal for this workshop is to develop a mathematics course that will show students how mathematics can be used to understand problems of social injustice. This would be a course that would meet the quantitative skills requirement at Wheaton. I am especially interested in hearing about your experiences teaching social justice and mathematics using student projects, in-class presentations, and service learning experiences.

Mary Vanderschoot

Introduction

2006-05-23T16:27:00.001-04:00

Hello all!

It is truly my pleasure to attend this conferrence! I've already learned tons from each of you, and cannot wait to learn more in the next few days.
It has been a truly thought-provoking experience for me to learn how much work teachers actually go through in planning courses and the connections between math and social justice I have never thought about before.
Again, thank you all for giving me this wonderful learning opportunity.

Intro to Sheila Weaver

2006-05-23T16:27:00.000-04:00

I teach Statistics and Math at the University of Vermont. I'm interested in creating a general ed math/stat course with social justice as a context, possibly a course that could fulfill a part of students' diversity requirement. I can see using topics related to the idea of fairness: voting theory, power indexes, fair division, House apportionment, game theory, stats (sampling, margin of error, experimental design, not sure what else) and I'm open to more topics..... I'd like to find a text or two to use as a base, though I could find lots of articles and web sources to supplement (any ideas as to a good text?) I'm also not sure how to incorporate diversity in a planned way (ideas welcome....) Thanks, Sheila

Kay's Introduction

2006-05-23T16:26:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone--I teach at a small liberal arts college in PA (1500 students) that has a general education curriculum in which each student must take a course from a category of courses titled "Social Impact of Science". Last fall I taught a course "Mathematics and Social Choice" that satisfied this requirement and covered topics related to voting and power indices. (Actually, I called it "Social Choice through the Lens of Mathematics" but that's too long for the transcript, so I need to change it.) Most of the students in the class were non-majors who chose this course because they like mathematics. (A good group!)

I'm interested in revising my course in a way that will incorporate a broader range of topics relating to mathematics and social justice. In particular, I'd like to reframe the course around some basic questions related to fairness issues that mathematics can help address. I'd also like to incorporate a service learning component. All ideas gratefully welcomed. . . Kay

Introduction: Andy Miller

2006-05-23T16:25:00.006-04:00

I come to this arena largely to get ideas to enrich one of my courses. Two years ago, I and a colleague developed a new general education mathematics course, Mathematical Inquiry. Mathematical Inquiry is one of the ways that students at Belmont University can fulfill the "quantitative reasoning" requirement of our recently adopted general education program. In this course, we try to give students a sense that mathematics is more about reasoning (e.g., proof) than about numbers (e.g., solving equations) and also that mathematics can be beautiful and interesting. A recent assessment of the course indicates that we have been moderately successful meeting these goals; on the other hand, students leave the course with, if anything, a lowered perception that mathematics is useful to their lives. I would like to change that, and I think dealing with some social justice issues may help me do so.

In addition, my university has as part of its mission statement that we "enable men and women of diverse backgrounds to engage and transform the world." My initial reaction to that statement was, "Not my job; I teach math." Recently, my reaction has changed to, "Might that be my job?" Perhaps in the future it will be "That's my job, and I love it!" On a more personal level, I believe that one of the most admirable qualities of the Methodist denomination (into which I married) is its longstanding focus on social justice issues.

In recent years, I have made a couple of initial efforts at introductin social justice issues into Mathematical Inquiry. One semester, I talked to the students about the Tennessee lottery (which sold its first ticket in January 2004). We dicussed, through the lens of probability, expected value, and compound interest, whether playing the lottery was a sound decision for an individual. We then discussed whether a lottery is good for a society, but not in much depth. (Personally, I think not: apart from any issues with compulsive gambling, research suggests that a lottery-funded scholarship redistributes money from the poor to the not-poor.) As many of my students are beneficiaries of the lottery through scholarships, they naturally had ambivalent feelings: many of them concluded that they personally would not play a lottery, but they were glad that others did, as otherwise they could not go to Belmont.

Another semester, I used an Interdisciplinary Lively Application Project from COMAP. The project I selected use exponential/logarithmic equations, linear regression, and simple algebra to analyze the relationship between a vehicle's speed and its emissions. I think students found this interesting, but they were a little overwhelmed by the technical demands of the unit; they reported to me that they spent so much effort learning the skills and the technology (Excel or graphing calculators) that it got in the way of the other learning.

Kerry

2006-05-23T16:25:00.005-04:00

How nice to be learning finally how to blog (or is that BLOG?)! And nice to be talking about teaching social justice with a stimulating group of people. I look forward to mining your minds for many ideas about how to connect quantitative analysis with social justice-related topics across the liberal arts.

I am a sociologist at Hood College, a small liberal arts college in Frederick MD (an hour from D.C. and from Baltimore, in the center of the state). My interest in this conference comes from different places. I was a co-PI on an NSF grant that involved working with a dozen sociology programs across the country to infuse data analysis throughout lower-level, non-research/statistics courses in sociology, and then attended an MAA conference on QL Across the Curriculum in the summer of 2004 with two math colleagues from Hood. Now I am working with the Task Force on QL at Hood with an eye toward changing our Core math requiirement to a more general QL requirement that can be met (eventually) in courses outside mathematics.

Other stuff: I do lots of work in the area of community-based research and recommend a book to those of you interested in incorporating this exciting form of service-learning into your teaching: Community-Based Research and Higher Education: Principles and Practices (Strand et al., Jossey-Bass, 2003). I also recommend the January 2006 issue of Teaching Sociology--a special issue on "Cultivating Quantitative Literacy." And thanks for all the terrific recommendations for readings that I have already accumulated here. . .

Kerry

Introduction - George Moss

2006-05-23T16:25:00.004-04:00

Hi. I teach at Lambuth University, a small liberal arts university affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Lambuth is located in Jackson, TN - the largest city between Memphis and Nashville. I've been at Lambuth for 2 years. Before that, I taught at the University of Virginia's College at Wise for 5 years.

I teach a freshman-level class called Mathematical Concepts that covers many of the topics appropriate for Math of SJ. I hope to use social justice ideas to make the class more relevant and exciting for the students. I also believe that the ideas of social justice mesh well with the teachings of Jesus, allowing me to integrate my faith and my teaching.

I'm also interested in math education and have worked with K-12 teachers (especially middle school teachers) through the Appalachian Math Science Partnership while at UVa-Wise. Even though I work with teachers and train future teachers, my wife and I homeschool our 5 kids.

Introduction - Catherine Roberts

2006-05-23T16:25:00.003-04:00

Hello Everyone,

I'm Catherine A. Roberts and it's wonderful meeting people who are energized by these ideas about social justice and mathematics.

I work at a small, liberal arts, undergraduate, Jesuit College called Holy Cross in Worcester, MA. In addition to being on the faculty in the Math & CS Department, I also am the director for the college's program in Environmental Studies. I like mathematical modeling, white water rafting, my family, walks on the beach, Firefly, Scrubs...oh, this isn't a personal ad???

This is weird that we're all in the same room together, staring at computer screens and typing to introduce ourselves...weird, weird, weird. I need to go now.

C.

Priscilla's addendum

2006-05-23T16:25:00.002-04:00

This morning I failed to mention why I'm venturing into the world of K-12 mathematics education. The reason: given the current state of math education in the U.S., mathematicians have a moral obligation to find constructive ways to contribute to that enterprise.

Of course there are lots of mathematicians involved already (Victor, Rob, the Occidental team...). But some contributors to the discussion -- present company excluded -- have been less than helpful participants in the Math Wars. I want to find ways that I can be useful to, say, teachers in Vermont, while appreciating their successes, taking cues from them, and understanding my own strengths and limitations. So I don't have their experience with struggling rural high school students, but I do have a more flexible schedule and access to more resources. I guess this is my own service learning project.

Greetings from Worcester State College

2006-05-23T16:25:00.001-04:00

Hi! My name is Steve Kunec. I'm a first-year faculty member in the Mathematics Department at Worcester State. My area of research is Biomathematics, with a focus on computational neuroscience. The mathematics of Social Justice is a relatively new field for me, yet I feel like it can be an important gateway into the world-at-large for me and my students.

I've come to this workshop because I have committed myself to teach a First Year Seminar for Worrcester State's new General Education curriculum. I fondly remember my own experiences with a FYS at Lafayette, so it seemed natural for me to take on this task.

The course's name is "Dilemmas, Decisions and Dating: An Introduction to Game Theory." It will explore the basic theory of games, such as the Prisoner's Dilemma and Nash Equilibriums, and I hope to contextualize these concepts for my students.

A subtopic within game theory is voting/apportionment strategies, which can fall under the heading of Social Justice. I will focus on these for 3-4 weeks and I hope to introduce a classroom activity that will illustrate the voting strategies that we cover in lecture. So far, I have toyed with the idea of creating a model UN or European Union and voting on various issues. I have also thought to have them vote on the "grade break-down" for the course.

I hope to hear from you, and I welcome any feedback that you may have...
Thanks!

Daylene's Introduction

2006-05-23T16:25:00.000-04:00

Hey Everyone,

I'm interested is using Moses' Radical Equations to build a Freshman Seminar around the essential empowerment of numeracy. I want to teach this course for the first time in the fall of 2007. I am thrilled with what I have learned in just a few hours today and can't wait to keep getting to know all of you!

Dancing Zebra

(My extended family blog has a tradition of never signing our actually names, but using "fake" names that have the correct initials.)

Introduction from Jack Bookman

2006-05-23T16:24:00.001-04:00

A colleague of mine (who is at Evergreen State College, in Olympia, WA) and I are planning on editing a small volume whose purpose would be to show the importance of some basic quantitative reasoning skills and methods for people interested in promoting social justice.

We envision this project will be useful for two groups of people: (1) activists who want
to learn how to use QR to more powerfully argue and advocate for progressive policy and
actions and (2) secondary and postsecondary teachers who want ideas and resources for
projects and examples of the use of quantitative reasoning with a social conscience.

Our very preliminary plan for the book would include a preface (describing the purpose
and plan of the book) and a set of 10 -12 five or six page chapters that describe
a social problem, talk about its importance and highlight the elementary mathematical
methods that could be used to analyze or solve the problem.

We've brainstormed a possible set of topics:
1. Prisons
2. Minimum Wage (for example, addressing the question of how much the minimum wage has
increased or decreased when the dollar amount is adjusted to control for inflation)
3. Environmental Justice (for example, addressing the relationship between asthma and
air quality and inner city residents)
4. The growing gap between rich and poor
5. Tax Policy (who benefits and by how much?)
6. The Cost of War (maybe something along the lines of
http://www.crunchweb.net/87billion/ and understanding the meaning of large numbers)
7. Government and Gambling - who pays for the state lottery? Is it a regressive tax?
8. Energy Policy (for example, how much oil would be saved by raising, CAFÃ
standard by 1 mile per gallon?)
9. Microlending (how it works) I found a list of references on microlending
at:http://www.gdrc.org/icm/bolivia-ref.html
10. Is Walmart Good or Bad For Communities? (I think we know the answer but I think
to be able to lay it out in quantitative terms would be a good thing)
11. something about immigration, and undocumented workers. Some of these topics may not
pan out and other ideas will emerge.

Introducing Ron Buckmire

2006-05-23T16:24:00.000-04:00

Hi...
I have my own blog called The Mad Professah Lectures. I also have a personal faculty website.
I'm the Chairman of the Mathematics Department at Occidental College, in Los Angeles, CA.
We have created a course called Mathematics, Education and Access to Power (MEAP) which will be a 2-unit course with a Community-Based Learning component to be run for the first time in Fall 2006. It will be taught by Professors Knoerr and Gallegos in the Fall and myself and Sundberg in the Spring.

I am interested in the Mathematics of Social Justice in an attempt to integrate the academic and activist portions of my life.

Introductions - Lisa Marano

2006-03-06T18:11:00.000-05:00

Hi Rob and fellow workshop participants!

As an attempt to try my hand at "blogging" and also to get to know you all a little better, I thought I'd post a brief introduction and why I am interested in participating in this workshop. Hopefully someo ther participants would follow suit.

So, my name is Lisa Marano and I am in my fourth year of a tenure track position at the West Chester University of Pennsylvania, one of PA's 14 state schools. We are located about 15 miles Southeast of Philadelphia and have a student body of roughly 12,000 undergrads and about 2,000 graduate students. My area of research is probability theory, especially Brownian motion and other Stochastic Processes, and mathematical finance.

I am currently participating in a "Curriculum Integration Seminar" at my school. The goal of this seminar, offered to all faculty across the campus, is to redesign the syllabus of one of our general education courses to address diversity issues which affect our students, the subject matter, and the way it is presented.

I am thoroughly enjoying this seminar, and becoming more familiar with some of the standard literature on racial identity studies, women studies, etc. We even had a private meeting last week with Jane Elliott, the "blue eyed/brown eyed-experience" women from film "Eye of the Storm." However, as the weeks pass by, I find the seminar to be slanted towards those teaching humanities courses; this, at times is frustrating for me. So, when I first got the e-mail announcement fort this seminar, I nearly leapt out of my chair. I'm really looking forward to getting some tangible ideas which I can readily employ in a new general education course which will count as a diversity distinction course (something our school has every student take at least one of; currently the mathematics department does not offer one.)

I guess that's all for now. I'm looking forward to hearing from the rest of you and participating in May.

Take care,
Lisa Marano

Department of Mathematics
West Chester University of PA
West Chester, PA 19382
e-mail: lmarano(at)wcupa(dot)edu

Workshop Full!

2006-03-04T16:10:00.000-05:00

The workshop has drawn many more participants than the organizers ever anticipated. There are currently more than 25 participants planned for a workshop that was intended to serve around a dozen. Because of this unexpected popularity, the workshop is closed to new applications. In the future, the organizers expect to offer other venues for discussion of the connection between college teaching of quantitative material and social justice.

Travel Planning Help

2006-02-13T21:18:00.000-05:00

Lodging for folks not commuting to the workshop will be at the Holiday Inn Express Easton. The hotel is a couple of miles west of campus. It provides a complimentary continental breakfast, an indoor pool, and a fitness center. You can learn more at the web site:

http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/ex/1/en/hd/ESNPA

Many participants are planning to fly to the workshop. Here are some airport facts.

The two most convenient airports are Allentown/Lehigh Valley (ABE) and Newark/Liberty (EWR). Less convenient are Kennedy (JFK) and Philadelphia (PHL).

ABE is about 15 miles from campus, or a 20-25 minute cab ride. There is local bus service to ABE, but there is a transfer to get to Easton, and another to get to the hotel, which is ~250 yards from the nearest bus stop. This will not be convenient if you are carrying very much luggage, you are pressed for time, or you are arriving late. (Buses stop at the airport from 6:30AM to 5:00PM roughly every hour.) If you want to try this, see the web site for the local bus service:

http://www.lantabus.com/

If you fly into ABE, I recommend a cab, which is about $25 one way. ABE is a small airport, and--if you can get a convenient flight--it is easy to get into and out of. Getting a taxi is quick and easy, if expensive. For more information see the airport ground transportation web page at

http://www.lvia.org/info_booth/ground_trans.html

EWR is a major airport just outside of New York City, about 60 miles from Easton. There is bus service to and from Easton via Transbridge Lines. As of this writing, a round trip ticket is $30.25. There are 9 buses daily, so there is rarely more than 2 hours between buses. For a schedule, see the Transbridge web site at

http://www.transbridgelines.com

If you fly into JFK, it takes a long time to get to Easton. By public transportation you must first get to the Port Authority Bus Station in Manhattan; there are buses or trains for doing this. From the Port Authority, take a Transbridge bus to Easton. This is fairly convenient, as there are buses roughly once an hour from 7:30 AM to 9:25 PM, and a final bus leaves at 11:30 PM. There are also three buses a day that go from JFK to Easton, but it takes about three hours even without transferring. Check the Transbridge web site for details.

If you fly into PHL, there is no convenient public transportation to Easton. We will try to arrange a van if folks find that flying to PHL saves them lots of money. So, if you are doing this, please let us know.

We may be able to get a van to ferry people around Easton, say from the airport to the hotel, or from the bus station to the hotel. Let me know what your travel needs are and we will try to accommodate.

What is this about?

2006-02-08T20:07:00.000-05:00

This blog was created to accompany a course development workshop at Lafayette College. Eventually it should serve as a means of collaboration and dissemination for the workshop and others interested in the topic. Since the workshop is still more than three months away, there may not be much activity at first.

Here is an announcement of the workshop:

The Mathematics of Social Justice

A Course Development Workshop

Lafayette College, May 23-25, 2006

Contemporary society is filled with political, economic, and cultural issues that arise from mathematical ideas. This workshop will aid faculty in mathematics and related disciplines to develop undergraduate general education courses for their home institutions, courses that engage students in understanding the connection between quantitative literacy and social justice.

Topics addressed will be set by the participants, however possible topics include voting rights, voting fraud, gerrymandering, and one person/one vote; the impact of opinion polls on the democratic process; financial exploitation of the quantitatively illiterate; statistical misconceptions and their consequences in politics and policy; mathematics education as a determinant of economic status; and statistics in public health, health care, and health policy.

The workshop will provide an opportunity to identify and clarify topics, and to explore the available materials. Then they will disperse to pursue topics individually but communications will be maintained by email and blog. At the end July, preliminary materials will be collected and shared amongst participants teaching the course in the fall. Successive revisions of the materials will be collected to support subsequent course offerings. The participants will gather again at a math conference sometime after the 2006-07 academic year, to present the results of their courses using materials developed by the workshop, and the presentations--including bibliographies, syllabi, and class activities--will be assembled for all participants to have.

The workshop will be co-hosted by Pennsylvania Campus Compact, and held at Lafayette College in Easton, PA from Tuesday, May 23, till noon of Thursday May 25. Lodging will be provided, however participants and their home institutions will be expected to cover transportation and food costs. Participants will be expected to provide preliminary curricular materials developed for the workshop at the end of July to support those teaching a course in the fall. Revised materials will be made available to each participant as they teach a course requiring those materials. Eventually the participants will gather at a professional meeting to make presentations regarding their experiences in courses arising from the workshop.

Application for participation can be made by completing and returning the form available at the workshop web site:

http://www.lafayette.edu/~math/Rob/MathOfSJ

In general applications will be accepted first-come, first-served, however priority will be given to applicants who are (1) planning to teach a course using materials developed by the workshop (2) in the coming academic year. Participation requires a commitment by you and/or your institution to cover the costs of transportation and food for the workshop.

For further information, or to apply for participation, contact
Rob Root
Department of Mathematics
Lafayette College
Easton, PA 18042-1781
ROBROOT@LAFAYETTE.EDU
(610) 330-5280 (Office)