The 37th Annual Mathematics Symposium will run from 8:30 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. at Frostburg State University on Friday, April 18, 2008.

Our featured speaker will be Dr. Annalisa Crannell. Dr. Crannell is a Professor of Mathematics at Franklin and Marshall College, where she has been since earning her doctorate at Brown University in 1992. She was the 2007 winner of the Mathematics Association of America's Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware Section Distinguished Teaching Award, and she is the co-director of the NSF-supported Viewpoints Workshops. Her primary research is Chaos Theory, but she also is active in developing courses on Mathematics and Art. She has worked extensively with students and other teachers on writing in mathematics, and with recent doctorates on employment in mathematics. She especially enjoys talking to non-mathematicians who haven't (yet) learned where the most beautiful aspects of the subject lie.

Dr. Crannell's symposium talk will be "Math and Art: The Good, the Bad, and the Pretty." She will lead attendees in an exploration of the mathematics behind perspective paintings-a mathematics that starts off with simple rules, and yet leads into really lovely, really tricky mathematical puzzles. Why do artists use vanishing points? What's the difference between 1-point and 3-point perspective? What's the difference between a perspective artist and a camera? These questions, and more, will be addressed.

 

The FSU Mathematics Symposium is partially funded by the Maryland Council of Teachers of Mathematics, an FSU Faculty Development Award, and by the Office of the Provost.