2025 Joint Mathematics Meetings

Join us at the 2025 Joint Mathematics Meetings, January 8-11, 2025, in Seattle, WA. MAA is proud to present several sessions at this year's JMM, including the invited speakers. Be sure to check out jointmathematicsmeetings.org for additional sessions, including MAA Project NExT sessions, which are open to all! Register today!

MAA-AMS-SIAM Gerald and Judith Porter Public Lecture

The Mathematics of Doodling

Ravi Vakil, Stanford University

Saturday, January 11, 2025, 2:15 p.m.-3:20 p.m.

Doodling is a creative and fundamentally human activity, resulting in doodles with intricate and often hidden implicit structure. We will treat doodles as an example for how mathematics is done — by starting with some doodles, we will ask ourselves some natural questions and see where they take us. They will lead us to some unexpected places, and to some sophisticated mathematics.

MAA-SIAM-AMS Hrabowski-Gates-Tapia-McBay Lecture

Integral Tales: Some Unexpected Connections

Victor Moll, Tulane University

Friday, January 10, 2025, 9:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m.

During the process of learning Calculus one observes that there is a well-defined list of rules to compute derivatives: product, quotient and chain rules are among the first taught in every class. On the other hand, when one tries to compute integrals, the student is left with a feeling that now there is simply a collection of tricks. There is no clear reason why one can integrate e^x in a simple manner, but the integral of e^x^2 is more complicated. One learns these tricks from the instructor, by talking to older classmates or by searching for them online. In the end, there seems to be no systematic way of doing this.

It is remarkable that, in the search of producing closed-forms of definite integrals, one finds many interesting connections with apparently disjoint parts of Mathematics. Examples will include (1) properties of a collection of positive integers appearing in the evaluation of rational functions, (2) a planar dynamical system connected with a variation of the arithmetic-geometric mean and (3) a list of definite integrals involving the gamma function.

The lecture will be suitable for undergraduates and it will include stories about how the speaker got involved in such projects.

MAA Lecture on Teaching and Learning

Precalculus and Calculus: Why Do We Teach It and Who Is Allowed to Learn It?

Eric Hsu, San Francisco State University

Thursday, January 9, 2025, 10:50 a.m.-11:55 a.m.

We analyze the historical development of precalculus and calculus as a changing academic subject; the effectiveness of different institutional placement strategies for deciding who is allowed to learn it; how the usual measuring stick of course passing rates conceals important information; and the challenges of promoting real curricular change.

Additional sessions can be found at jointmathematicsmeetings.org; note that all Project NExT sessions listed there are open to everyone!