The Ohio Section Meeting

At the Ohio Section meeting, undergraduate students and faculty from all around the state of Ohio gather to give and hear talks on a variety of math-related subjects. This year, the meeting was held at John Carroll University in Cleveland, during April 17-18. Heather Matthews '99, Ted Rogers '00, and Stephanie Goes '01 attended the Ohio Section meeting with Professors Carol Schumacher and Judy Holdener. There, Heather and Ted presented information on fields concerning their own particular interests in mathematics.

Heather's Presentation:
The Strong Law of Large Numbers

The Weak Law of Large Numbers is generally well-known by the undergraduate probability and statistic student. The Strong Law of Large Numbers on the other is not generally discussed. A first glance at the Strong Law shows that it doesn't seem to be claiming anything different than the Weak Law. However, first glances are decieving; there are subtle differences between the Strong and the Weak Law. In fact, if we know the Strong Law holds, then the Weak Law will hold as well. The converse, that the Weak Law implies the Strong Law, is not true. In her talk, Heather gave an an example of how the converse doesn't hold, which illuminated the difference between the Strong and the Weak Laws.

Ted's Presentation:
Why the Universe is Clumpy

Ted's talk discussed how the second law of thermodynamics predicts the "heat death" theory of the fate of the universe. That is, because everything tends to gravitate towards a state of disorder, the universe should reach a static state in which there are no macroscopic bodies and there is no uniform motion. He used concepts of vector analysis to show how gravitational forces preclude the possibility of the universe ever actually reaching heat death by causing matter to form clumps.

For their talks, Heather and Ted were awarded with memberships to the Mathematics Association of America. Altogether, this year's meeting was a lot of fun and both students and faculty learned a lot from the presentations given by other students and faculty from around the state. For more information about the Ohio Section of the MAA, you can visit their homepage (also available from the "Math Links" section of this website).