The Department of Mathematics and Statistics wishes to congratulate Dr. Mei-Ling Huang and Dr. Henryk Fuks. At the 2017-2018 Faculty of Mathematics and Science awards, Dr. Huang received the Dean’s Distinguished Scholar Award. Dr. Fuks was awarded the Distinguished Research Award for Faculty. Congratulations to them both!
For more details, please see the story in the Brock News.
Math Ed Seminar Series @ Brock
Season 2017- 2018
Revisiting the Role of Common Sense in
Mathematical Word Problem Solving
Dr. Abolfazl Rafiepour
Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman (Iran)
Visiting Professor at Department of Mathematics and Statistics (Brock University)
29 January @ 10:00 in TA403
Dr. Abolfazl Rafiepour is an associate professor of mathematics education, in faculty of
mathematics and computer, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Iran. He is a visiting scholar
professor at Brock University. His special research interest is about modelling and application in
domain of mathematics education. He taught several mathematics and mathematics education
courses at the undergraduate and graduate level and has supervised more than 20 master students
and one PhD student in the domain of mathematics education. He published more than 20 research
papers. He also presents several papers in national and international conferences.
Abstract: In this lecture, the role of mathematical word problem will be recognized in
mathematics education and school mathematics textbooks. Then relation between mathematical
word problem and modelling activities will be explained. Afterward “suspending of common
sense in solving mathematical word problem” as a strange phenomenon will be described through
several mathematical word problems as example. Finally, results of several research studies in this
topic (which focused in different aspect such as students, teachers, math textbook) from different
countries will be presented. Through these results, roots of “suspending common sense in solving
mathematical word problem” will be identified in mathematics textbooks, mathematics teacher
education and social norm of mathematics classrooms.
All undergraduate(including teacher candidates) students, graduate students , and faculty, from Department of Mathematics and Statistics and the Faculty of Education are welcome!
For information, contact: Chantal Buteau: cbuteau@brocku.ca or Joyce Mgombelo: Joyce.Mgombelo@brocku.ca
Season 2017- 2018
Mark your calendar!
15 January @ 10:00 in TA403
Dr. Chantal Buteau, Dr. Eric Muller
Department of Mathematics and Statistics (Brock University)
& Dr. Joyce Mgombelo
Faculty of Education (Brock University)
‘Coding’ and mathematics: the students’ learning experience
29 January @ 10:00 in TA403
Dr. Abolfazl Rafiepour
Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman (Iran)
Visiting Professor at Department of Mathematics and Statistics (Brock University)
Revisiting the role of common sense in mathematical word problem solving
12 February @ 10:00 in TA403
Dr. Mina Sedaghatjou,
Faculty of Education (Brock University)
Finger counting in the Era of touchscreen-based technology
19 March @ 10:00 in TA403
Dr. Joyce Mgombelo
Faculty of Education (Brock University)
Title TBA
When it’s raining outside and you want to stay as dry as possible, is it better to walk in the rain, or run?
It’s a question that wouldn’t be tackled in traditional ‘paper and pencil’ undergraduate mathematics courses, but educators at Brock University are teaching their students how to tap into the power of computers to model, simulate, visualize and choose the best alternatives in calculations.
“It’s using computer programming as an instrument to engage in mathematics investigations,” says Chantal Buteau, Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.
“It’s taking a scientific, experimental approach to mathematics: asking questions, conjecturing, testing math problems or applications with programming and seeing the outcomes through computer simulations, then further tweaking the problem or model to continue the math work,” she says.
Buteau and fellow mathematicians Bill Ralph and Henryk Fuks are adapting the
European Mathematical Society’s view that, beyond theory and experimentation, “a third pillar of scientific inquiry of complex systems has emerged in the form of a combination of modelling, simulation, optimization and visualization.”
“Few post-secondary mathematics programs address this 21st century need by adapting the curricula to combine mathematics and computer programming,” says Buteau.
Brock is the exception.
For more details, please see the story in the Brock News
Our former Statistics MSc student Ke Zhao, Ph.D. has been promoted to a position as a Portfolio Analyst, Portfolio Management, Accountability and Operations, Advanced Education for the Government of Alberta, Canada. Congratulations to Dr. Ke Zhao!”
Brock students are working to make math equal fun by adding a dash of creativity.
Students in a third-year math course, Mathematics at the Junior/Intermediate/Senior Level, have been working to create kits to help make math more accessible to young learners.
Coinciding with National STEM Day, the first of three presentations related to the kits took place Nov. 8 and offered faculty, students and Let’s Talk Science Outreach at Brock volunteers a sneak peek into the hands-on, interactive math-based activities.
The project, a new addition to the long-running Math 3P91 course, provides the class of future math educators an opportunity to apply the theoretical concepts they learn in class.
For more details, please see the story in the Brock News.
Professor Chantal Buteau will be giving the keynote presentation at the research colloquium of the APTICA (L’Association pour l’avancement pédagogique des technologies de l’information et de la communication en Atlantique) 2017 annual congress taking place at University of Moncton on October 30 to November 4, 2017. Professor Buteau’s presentation is titled “Pensée informatique et mathématiques”. See http://www.aptica.ca/congres/colloque-en-recherche/.
The Department of Mathematics and Statistics would like to congratulate our graduating MSc student, Sarah Bax, for being recognized with the Brock University Board of Trustees Spirit of Brock Medal at convocation. For more details, please see the story in the Brock News. Congratulations Sarah!
Professor Buteau is organizing a 3-day symposium, titled Computational Thinking in Mathematics Education, on October 13-15, 2017. The event, funded by the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, will be hosted at UOIT and is organized together with Dr Namukasa (UWO), Dr. Gadanidis (UWO), Dr. Kotsopoulos (Huron College), and Dr. Hughes (UOIT). A ‘Maker Day‘ workshop for prospective and in-service teachers will be hosted during the day on October 13, 2017 prior to the symposium. See the poster or ctmath.ca for more details or contact Professor Buteau.
Keynote Speaker Lyn EnglishLearning Innovation in STEM Education10/13/2017 7:00:00 PM1:30:00
Keynote Speaker Michelle WilkersonComputational Integration to Support Expression, Refinement, and Collective Knowledge in Classroom Communities10/14/2017 4:00:00 PM1:30:00
When: Wednesday, September 20, 2017 – 11:00am – 12:00pm
Brock University Computer Science Department Seminar Series
presents
Prof. Andries Engelbrecht
University of Pretoria
Pretoria, South Africa
Heterogeneous Particle Swarm Optimizers: Scalability,
Self-Adaptive Behaviors, and Dynamic Environments
Abstract: Particles in the standard particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm, and most of its modifications, follow the same behaviours. That is, particles implement the same velocity and position update rules. This means that particles exhibit the same search characteristics. Heterogeneous PSO (HPSO), on the other hand, allow particles to follow different search behaviours selected from a behaviour pool, thereby efficiently addressing the exploration–exploitation trade-off problem.
This talk will provide an overview of very simple HPSO algorithms, and will provide empirical results to show that they are more efficient than the homogeneous PSO algorithms making up the behaviour pool of the HPSO algorithm. The talk will also discuss the HPSO scalability properties, and will present approaches to self-adaptive behaviour selection. The talk will end with an illustration of the performance of simple HPSO algorithms in dynamic environments.
Professor Andries Engelbrecht is the South African Research Chair of Artificial Intelligence in the Computer Science Department, University of Pretoria
Location of your event: H313
Cost: $0.00
