The 2001 James "Duke" Sehnert  Memorial Lectures

Tuesday, October 30 at 3:05 pm, room ST 248

Mathematical Cranks

Underwood Dudley
Professor of Mathematics
DePauw University

When people think of mathematical cranks (if they think of them at all), it's usually along the lines of, "Oh, those nuts who trisect the angle and square the circle." This is inaccurate. Cranks are not usually insane and the range of problems that they attack and fail to solve is vast. This talk gives a brief survey of an immense field.

Tuesday, October 30, 2001 at 7:30 pm, room BEP 200

Why Mathematics?

Underwood Dudley
Professor of Mathematics
DePauw University

Why learn mathematics? Why do we make more and more high school students--all of them, in California--learn algebra? Why teach trigonometry, geometry, and calculus? I will give six reasons, four of which are wrong, one of which is half-right, and I will end with the right reason.


We encourage high school teachers and high school students to join us for this special event!

High school teachers: At 6:00 pm, bring yourself and/or one or two students and join us for a free dinner in the University Center Cafeteria. (Please call and check on availability of space for dinner if you want to bring more than two students for dinner.) If you can make it for dinner, please call the Math Dept. office at (859) 572-5377, by Friday, October 26, so that we may plan accordingly.

Sponsored by the Mathematics and Computer Science Department at NKU. For further information, contact 
Dr. Lisa Elderbrock Rome at elderbrockL@nku.edu or by phone at (859) 572-6452.