Report on the 73-rd Annual Meeting of the Wisconsin Section of the Mathematical Association of America Report submitted September 16, 2005 The 73-rd Annual Spring Meeting of the MAA-Wisconsin Section was hosted by UW-Washington County the weekend of April 15-16, 2005. Registration began at noon, Friday, on the UW-Washington County Campus. Talks began at 1:30 p.m. Friday, and the last talk was an invited address from 11:05 a.m. until noon on Saturday, April 16, 2005. In 1983, the section also held its annual meeting at UW-Washington County. The Friday evening banquet was in the same dining room as in 1983. However, this year we adjourned afterward to the theater for a presentation of awards, followed by the evening speaker, Kenneth Starbird. Four local teachers received the High School Teaching award: (presented by Colleen Vachuska) Ms. Robbie Fackelman, West Bend East High School Mr. David Olson, Random Lake High School Mr. Bill Millonig, West Bend East High School Mr. Jerry Danner, Lomira High School The Secretary/treasurer presented the 2005 Award for Distinguished Teaching in the Mathematical Sciences. His presentation speech went something like this: "The recipient of this award is a colleague who teaches both mathematics and computer science. In recent years a majority of his classes have been in computer science. In pure mathematics the recipient has, in the words of his department chair, an intimate knowledge of algebra and group theory, and excels at teaching the undergraduate and graduate algebra classes. He also teaches a Putnam Exam course with great success. The recipient was a student of Marty Isaacs. Marty, himself, received the distinguished teaching award in 1993, and this is the first time in the history of the Wisconsin Section that a mathematical offspring of a recipient is a recipient. This year the recipient of the award is Marquette University mathematics professor, Dr. Michael Slattery." Michael Slattery thanked the section and his colleagues for the award, and cited a particularly influential high school mathematics teacher from his youth. He also praised his former thesis advisor as a mentor, role model for teachers, and as a valued colleague with whom to collaborate in research. He ended with the advice that sharing a problem with Marty had the danger that Marty is apt to launch excitedly into a half hour discussion of the problem during the course of which an outline of a good part of the solution may emerge. The after dinner speaker was Michael Starbird who gave a delightful talk, "The Will of the People? or Peril at the Polls." The talk was about voting methods, and to illustrate several voting methods he selected three Wisconsin Section Executive Committee members to get up on the stage and run for election to an unspecified office. It was most entertaining. Memorable quotations Michael Starbird quoting self: "Knowledge comes and goes, but hatred lasts forever." Alexander Nagel, from his invited address. "Consider a car in the plane. Since we are mathematicians we have to define a car. A car is an ordered six-tuple ..." Frank Farris, from his invited address "The rich are indeed getting richer." From a contributed talk on the exponential distribution, and with reference to a student of the speaker: "Unfortunately he's in Iraq now. I'll not go into that." From a talk by the 2005-06 section chair, David Scott, "Help students gain - or at least recognize the need for - unthinking command of fundamentals." Invited addresses: Dr. Frank Farris (Santa Clara University; Editor, Mathematics Magazine) "Equitability and the Gini Index" Dr. Michael Starbird (University of Texas - Austin) "The Most Important Course in College: Why not Math?" (Prof. Starbird also gave the banquet address as reported above. Dr. Alexander Nagel (University of Wisconsin - Madison; recipient of the Section's 2004 Distinguished Teaching Award) "Car Parking, and the Carnot-Caratheodory Geometry" BOOKSALE Jim Marty ran the book sale on both Friday and Saturday. A total of 44 books were sold for gross sales of $ 1017.00. Of this total, $174.50 was in cash and the rest was in checks and credit cards. INCOME Pre-registrations 5 retired persons @ 10.00 3 invited speakers @ 0.00 11 non members @ 17.00 56 regular members @ 15.00 26 students @ 0.00 Total pre-registrations: 101 $ 1077.00 Registrations at meeting 17 regular participants @ 20.00 2 publishers @ 50.00 12 students @ 0.00 Total on-site registrations: 31 $ 440.00 Banquet Reservations Pre-registrations 3 invited guests @ 0.00 (Alexander Nagel, Michael Starbird Frank Farris) 72 Regular tickets @ 17.00 19 students @ 5.00 Reservations made at the meeting 6 @ 20.00 Total banquet sales $ 1439.00 Total income: $ 2956.00 COSTS 100 dinners 1490.00 refreshments 118.81 Honoraria for speakers 150.00 Student help @ $6.50/hour 48.75 Total Costs 1807.56 _____________ Spring Meeting Profit: 1148.44 End of Report Respectfully submitted, Andrew Matchett Secretary/treasurer