The 2023 PME conference is pleased to host Jennifer Quinn as invited speaker.
Dr. Jennifer Quinn is Past-President of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), professor of mathematics at the University of Washington Tacoma, and PME faculty advisor to Theta of Washington. She earned her BA, MS, and PhD from Williams College, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the University of Wisconsin, respectively. At UW Tacoma for the past 16 years, she helped build a mathematics curriculum on the expanding campus. Jenny has held many positions of national leadership in mathematics including Executive Director of the Association for Women in Mathematics, co-editor of MAA’s Math Horizons, and President of MAA 2021-22. She received an MAA Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching and a Beckenbach Book award for Proofs That Really Count: The Art of Combinatorial Proof, co-authored with Arthur Benjamin. Committed to making mathematics accessible, appreciated, and humane especially during the global pandemic, Jenny began the blog Math in the Time of Corona where she chronicled her experiences on emergency remote teaching of mathematics, maintaining humanity, and building community in isolation. As a combinatorial scholar, Jenny thinks that beautiful proofs are as much art as science. Simplicity, elegance, transparency, and fun should be the driving principles.
Friday Evening Talk
Solving Mathematical Mysteries
Abstract: Much as mysteries in fiction consider evidence, find common patterns, and draw logical conclusions to solve crimes, mathematical mysteries are unlocked using the same tools. This talk exposes secrets behind a numerical magic trick, a geometric puzzle, and an unknown quantity to find a fascinating pattern with connections to art, architecture, and nature.
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Saturday Morning Talk
Epic Battles: Counting vs Matching
Which technique is mathematically superior? The audience will judge of this tongue-in-cheek combinatorial competition between the mathematical techniques of counting and matching. Be prepared to explore positive and alternating sums involving binomial coefficients, Fibonacci numbers, and other beautiful combinatorial quantities. How are the terms in each sum concretely interpreted? What is being counted? What is being matched? Which is superior? You decide.
