# CURM First Meeting, 9/2/2008

## Agenda

• Introductions
• CURM students and faculty
• Interlopers!;)
• Description of CURM Logistics
• expectations
• Meetings:
• Miami Fall Conference (attending): "Recreational Mathematics", September 26-27, 2008
• Posters at the Capital (possibly presenting) -- usually late January, 2009
• BYU conference (presenting), Provo, Utah, March 19-22, 2009
• KY MAA conference (presenting), Kentucky State University, March 27-28, 2009
• The Mathematical Contest in Modeling (February 5-9, 2009)
• In addition to the meetings, I expect you to participate in the MCM contest, which takes place over a weekend. Katie may be able to tell us more about that....
• deliverables
• Presentation at the BYU conference
• A final report of our work
• money
• Grant payable in four installments
• Structure of Meetings
• Group meeting:
• Once per week
• Objective: stay on course, share pains and gains, etc.
• Do a little "math exercise" together (we'll see one shortly)
• Group Meeting Scheduling
• Right now, Tuesday afternoons, 3:15-5:00
• Options on Thursday afternoons?
• Options on Friday at 2:00?
• Individual meetings:
• once per week
• 30 minutes
• see me for a convenient time.
• Please turn off cell phones during the meetings.
• Latex
• If you're going to be a mathematician, you have to learn to write math like a mathematician.
• The CURM faculty decided that students in our groups should learn "latex". I concur with this recommendation, although it's somewhat painful.
• There are good public domain versions of latex (e.g. Miktex for Windows)
• Latex commands work well in the wiki: ${\displaystyle \int {\frac {\sqrt {x^{2}+1}}{\sin(x-\pi )}}dx}$
• Speaking of the wiki...
• We'll use the wiki to organize our work.
• Each of you should have a wiki account and password; you'll have a page of your own to edit, and then each research project will have its own page.
• My personal expectations:
• You will have fun. This is supposed to be an enjoyable and profitable interaction for us all. Let's work to achieve that!
• Group Dynamics:
• I believe that we must all demonstrate thorough professionalism in our interactions.
• Respect each others' opinions.
• Work well with each other.
• Set and live up to reasonable expectations.
• If there are personality conflicts, we must work through them. I hope that there won't be, but we must be professionals through and through.
• You will put in approximately 10 hours per week throughout the year. At some points you will be putting in more hours, at other points you will be putting in fewer; but on average, you will put in 10 hours per week.
• You will submit a brief report at the end of each week (this can be on the wiki, or in a typed document), describing your activities for the week.
• Intermission
• Brief intro to modeling tools
• Know thy functions
• Linear Regression, and other friends from statistics
• estimation
• errors
• For next time:
1. Can we meet on Friday at 2:00 for Dr. Hastings's project description?
2. Think about the different research projects, and come back with questions/concerns about each one.
3. Visit the wiki, and play around (check out the sandbox)
4. Google around for some latex "quick reference" materials, and see if you can practice some of that on the wiki.
5. Write up a solution to our first "problem of the week" (on the wiki, if possible).