Mathematics

Student Activities

Seminar

Every Wednesday afternoon in the fall and spring semesters our mathematics majors meet in an hour-long seminar. Here students make oral presentations on a variety of mathematical and scientific topics that change regularly. All math majors are required to participate in this seminar throughout their junior and senior years.

Past topics have included:

• graph theory
• game theory
• using Python in mathematics
• category theory
• history of mathematics
• functional analysis

Other activities of student interest are:

R-GILE

Reading Group In Linguistics at Eckerd. Each week, a group of students and faculty meet to discuss various topics in linguistics. The group discusses issues in historical linguistics such as how English has changed over the centuries, cognitive linguistics including how a grammar could be represented in the mind, how children learn language so quickly, and what are the current theories of grammar. The groups interests in language are quite varied, and they are always looking for new people and topics — no previous knowledge about linguistics is needed, only a curiosity about how language works! R-GILE is coordinated by Professor Merchant.

Topology Problem Solving Group

Augmenting the course Introduction to Topology, a group of students will conduct a close reading of some supplemental topology textbooks ofttimes communicating directly with the authors to correct typographical errors in the texts. The Topology Problem Solving Group is coordinated by Professor Kerr.