‘MathFest’ solves the unsolvable

Pratibha Gautam The Department of Mathematics at Troy University successfully conducted its 13th MathFest last weekend. The event hosted about 100 students and faculty researchers from over 10 different institutions. According to Kenneth Roblee, the chair of mathematics, an event like this serves as a forum for undergraduate students to present their research and interact with representatives from different graduate schools. “MathFest also exposes students to new mathematical ideas not typically encountered in a class and from a group of their mathematical peers from across the Southeast,” Roblee said. Soumitra Ganguly, a freshman physics major from Kolkata, India, presented his talk on “Generalization of L’Hospital’s Rule to Multivariable Functions,” a generalization of a “trick” to solve some otherwise unsolvable problems in calculus. He said he learned about an application of the rule in multi-variable calculus and added an extension to the work in his presentation. Two guest speakers from the University of West Georgia and the University of South Alabama gave talks on Linear Algebra and Data Science respectively. The other talks included a wide range of topics from Renaissance era mathematics and Bayesian statistics to quantum mechanics and general relativity. David Leach, a professor at the University of West Georgia, was one of the guest speakers of the event and delivered a talk on a math-based computer game, its different configurations and ways to win the game using linear algebra. The second speaker, Professor Madhuri S. Mulekar from the University of South Alabama, presented her talk on the historical development of Data Science and its likely future. Besides the presentations, MathFest also featured a 20-minute poster session which included posters on mapping sound waves and the effects of elevation of skin cancer. There was also a graduate information session where different graduate schools set up tables to provide students with information on their graduate programs in mathematics, statistics and biostatistics. Marie Neubrander, a sophomore math major from the University of Alabama, won the cash prize for the calculus competition which was the final activity of the event.