schedule April 1, 2023
Juniata College Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Brown Bag Talk Series, Huntingdon, PA
Mathemalchemy is a room sized art installation that represents math through beauty and whimsy. What is Mathemalchemy? How did it come about? What next? I will answer these questions and lead a conversation about how math and art combine in the work.
schedule January 26, 2023
Juniata College Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Brown Bag Talk Series, Huntingdon, PA
Joint work and talk with Ásgerður Jóhannesdóttir, University of Iceland and Alice Petillo, Marymount University. The math and art installation, Mathemalchemy, was at the JCMA from late June to early December 2022. Kim and Kathryn Blake had many plans for outreach related to the installation. Alice Petillo at Marymount University and Ása Jóhannesdottír of the University of Iceland both had mathematics education projects related to Mathemalchemy that Kim became involved in. Kim, Alice, and Ása will speak about what was planned and what occurred.
schedule January 5, 2023
AMS Special Session on the Math and Art of Mathemalchemy, Joint Mathematics Meetings, Boston, MA
From the Mandelbrot Bakery to Koch’s Peak, Mathemalchemy is full of fractals. I will talk about what fractals appear in Mathemalchemy, the math and art exhibit.Fractals will be described by their type and some of their constructions mathematically and artistically.
schedule January 4, 2023
AMS Special Session on Mathematics and the Fiber Arts, Joint Mathematics Meetings, Boston, MA
While knitting a Hue Shift afghan, I began to wonder, how many possible afghans of this type are there? This led to more questions. What makes an afghan a Hue Shift? What should we count and how? These questions will be answered and other questions will be asked.
schedule September 14, 2022
with Kathryn Blake, Juniata College Bookend Seminar
Mathemalchemy is a room sized art installation that represents math through beauty and whimsy. It is on view at the Juniata College Museum of Art until Dec. 3rd. What is Mathemalchemy? How did I come about? How did Dr. Roth get involved? How did it arrive at Juniata? We will answer these questions and lead a conversation about how math and art combine in the work.
schedule August 4, 2022
SIGMAA Statistics and Data Science Education Contributed Paper Session, Data for Good: Bringing Social and Professional Responsibility into the Statistics Classroom, Mathfest, Philidelphia, PA. Winner of the Dex Whittinghill Award for Best talk in SIGMAA-SDSEd Session
Talking about sampling is a standard part of introductory statistics. Teaching the census allows for discussion of sampling versus enumeration as well as differential undercount. Adddionally discussions of data privacy techniques for census data generate interest.
schedule August 5, 2022
with Samantha Pezzimenti, Penn State Brandywine, Math and Art Contributed Paper Session
Mathemalchemy brought together twenty-four mathematical artists and artistic mathematicians to create a large multimedia mathematical art installation, celebrating the creativity and beauty of mathematics. The project, which began in 2019 under the leadership of mathematician Ingrid Daubechies and fiber artist Dominique Ehrmann, debuted this year for its tour of exhibitions. In this talk, we will take a virtual tour of the installation, highlighting some specific vignettes, their mathematical connections, and their fabrication process. We will also discuss plans for related outreach programs, including workshops for K12 students.
schedule June 29, 2022
Juniata College Summer Research Seminar
Mathemalchemy is a room sized art installation that represents math through beauty and whimsy. It is on view at the Juniata College Museum of Art until Dec. 3rd. What is Mathemalchemy? How did I come about? How did Dr. Roth get involved? How did it arrive at Juniata? We will answer these questions and lead a conversation about how math and art combine in the work.
schedule October 12, 2021
with Jim Tuten and Hannah Bellwoar. Conference on the First Year Experience, virtual
To explore the degree of student engagement in common reading programs, the researchers conducted a five-year longitudinal study of the common reading program at a small, private liberal arts college. Quantitative and qualitative data gathered through two surveys each year revealed rates and degrees of engagement with the program and suggested some of the range of student outcomes from a common reading program.
schedule March 15, 2021
Allegheny Mountain Colloquium for the Allegheny Mountain section of the Mathematical Association of America, virtual
When you have thousands of variables that you can select from to describe and predict whether active fracking is occurring, how do you choose? Random forests are a learning method that uses an ensemble of decision trees to build a predictive model. We’ll discuss how to make a random forest and how we used one to tell what measures from the microbiome and the sample site best predicted active fracking status.
schedule Feb 21, 2020
Penn State Microbiome Center Seminar, State College, PA
When you have thousands of variables that you can select from to describe and predict whether active fracking is occurring, how do you choose? Random forests are a learning method that uses an ensemble of decision trees to build a predictive model. We’ll discuss how to make a random forest and how we used one to tell what measures from the microbiome and the sample site best predicted active fracking status.
schedule Feb 12, 2020 JSI, Westminster Woods, Huntingdon, PA A discussion of trends in teaching with examples from Juniata College. Included discussion of inclusive pedagogy, active learning, growth mindset, community engaged learning, and wellness.
Trends in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
schedule Feb 4, 2020
Juniata College Mathematics Colloquium, Huntingdon, PA
When you have thousands of variables that you can select from to describe and predict whether active fracking is occurring, how do you choose? Random forests are a learning method that uses an ensemble of decision trees to build a predictive model. We’ll discuss how to make a random forest and how we used one to tell what measures from the microbiome and the sample site best predicted active fracking status.
schedule October 31, 2019
California University of Pennsylvania Mathematics Club, California, PA
When you have thousands of variables that you can select from to describe and predict whether active fracking is occurring, how do you choose? Random forests are a learning method that uses an ensemble of decision trees to build a predictive model. We’ll discuss how to make a random forest and how we used one to tell what measures from the microbiome and the sample site best predicted active fracking status.
schedule October 10, 2019
Talk, Franklin and Marshall College and Millersville University Joint Colloquium in Mathematics, Lancaster, PA
When you have thousands of variables that you can select from to describe and predict whether active fracking is occurring, how do you choose? Random forests are a learning method that uses an ensemble of decision trees to build a predictive model. We’ll discuss how to make a random forest and how we used one to tell what measures from the microbiome and the sample site best predicted active fracking status.
schedule August 05, 2019
Talk, Mathematics of Various Entertaining Subjects (MOVES), New York City, NY
Abstract: While knitting a Hue Shift afghan, I began to wonder, how many possible afghans of this type are there? This led to more questions. What makes an afghan a Hue Shift? What should we count and how? These questions will be answered and other questions will be asked.
schedule January 01, 2019
Conference proceedings talk, Joint Mathematics Meetings, Baltimore, MD
Joint work and talk with Kristen Camenga, who teaches the calculus class metioned below.
schedule November 01, 2018
Talk, Brown Bag SoTL Talk Series, Juniata College, Huntingdon, PA
Abstract: Classroom Response Systems also known as clickers have been used as an active learning technique together with peer instruction to increase student participation and understanding. I will discuss some study results from two recent literature reviews, one on each topic. Also I will demonstrate the free system of clickers, plickers, that I currently use.
schedule October 01, 2018
Talk, Brown Bag SoTL Talk Series, Juniata College, Huntgindon, PA
Joint work and talk with Kristin Camenga, who teaches the calculus class metioned below.
schedule May 01, 2018
Electronic Poster, Electronic Conference on Teaching Statistics (ECOTS), New York City, NY
With Loren Rhodes. Abstract: Introduction to Data Science is often offered as a course with prerequisites varying from an introductory statistics course to a first course in programming. Juniata College offers Introduction to Data Science as a class with no prerequisites that is intended for first year students. The course is part of the minor in Data Science. It is team taught by a statistician and a computer scientist and uses R and Weka as computing tools. This poster will talk about the course and its content along with successes and challenges in offering the course.
schedule January 01, 2018
Talk, Joint Mathematics Meetings, San Diego, CA
Abstract:This semester all three of my classes, Introduction to Probability and Statistics, Introduction to Data Science, and Statistical Consulting are using R. Each class has many students who have never used R and have a few who have. I will discuss the implementations that I used in each class and what the advantages and challenges of each implementation were. Options such as using an R Studio server and different graphing tools will be discussed.
schedule September 01, 2017
Talk, Who is your neighbor? Talk Series, Juniata College, Huntingdon, PA
Stop comparing your outsides to other people’s insides. Illustrated with personal experiences.
schedule January 25, 2017
Talk, Brown Bag SoTL Talk Series, Juniata College, Huntingdon, PA
Joint work and talk with Henry Escuadro. Abstract: When teaching a course with a prerequisite, we sometimes find that many students are underprepared on the prerequisite material needed. Whether we do a formal review or not is dependent on many factors. But if we are going to review the prerequisite material for the course we are teaching, two relevant questions that we should ask are how and when. In AY 2016, Henry Escuadro and Kim Roth worked on a project that they hoped would answer these questions in the context of Calculus 1. The standard prerequisite for Calculus 1 is Precalculus. Though Precalculus is offered at Juniata, many students taking Calculus 1 encounter the prerequisite materials in high school. However, due to various reasons, we find that many students come underprepared on precalculus material and doing a review of precalculus benefits a group of these students. Members of the Math Department do reviews two different ways — the first method is done at the beginning of the semester while the second method is done throughout the semester. This project was done to determine whether there was a difference in effectiveness between the two methods.
schedule August 01, 2016
Talk, Mathfest, Columbus, OH
Joint work with Henry Escuadro.
schedule June 01, 2016
Talk, AP Statistics Best Practices Talks, Kansas City, MO
Plickers is a classroom response system that I use in my classroom. Slides(‘http://www.apstatsmonkey.com/StatsMonkey/ReadBestPractice_files/plickersAPReading.pdf’)
schedule January 01, 2016
Talk, Joint Mathematics Meetings, Seattle, WA
Abstract: Classroom response systems or clickers are a popular way to get whole class feedback on a question. Used with peer instruction and discussion they can enhance students understanding of the material. However many systems cost both you and the students money. Plickers is a new free option for which the students use no devices to answer the question. Instead it uses pictures based on QR codes. I will discuss the reasons clicker questions are great to use in the introductory statistics classroom and the successes and challenges of doing so with Plickers.
schedule August 01, 2015
Talk, Mathfest, Washington, DC
With Erika Ward.