NEWSLETTER
Volume 1, Issue 1 - 2004

Print version

Contents

• Name the Newsletter
• Message from the Head
• Message from the Provost
• Message from the Dean
• New Faces, Arrivals and Departures
• In Memorium
• News from the Math + Stats Club
• WindSOR/SWORD, 2004
• Faculty of Science Annual Celebration of Success
• Recent Grads
• Publications, Conferences
• Notable Achievements
• Math Challenge
• Department News
• Dr. Caron's Golf Scheduling Program
• Reception marks 25 years of NSERC
• Southern Ontario Matrices and Statistics Days 2005

These past couple of years have been extremely productive for the Department.  We have created the Centre for Statistical Consulting, Research and Services, which provides consulting services to faculty, students, and industry.  We have renovated and reopened the Math and Statistics Resource Centre (MSRC), just in time for the double cohort.  There have also been some “cosmetic” changes.  The Faculty of Science provided funds to replace curtains in the offices with blinds.  New furniture has been ordered for the lounge, and a new fridge and stove were purchased in the Fall.

The double cohort resulted in our undergraduate majors’ enrolment more than doubling.  Our course enrolments in general increased significantly.  Our graduate enrolment reached its highest levels ever, with forty students expected for the Winter, 2005 semester, including thirteen Ph.D. students.  In order to prepare for this influx of students, the Department hired three new tenure-track faculty and seven limited-term faculty.  We are in the process of filling two other tenure-track positions, with more to come in the next year or so.  We have introduced new courses for graduate students, including one in Statistical Consulting, to be offered in Winter, 2006.  We are also introducing undergraduate programs in Statistics, and Actuarial Science and Statistics.

Students were encouraged this Fall, to reform the undergraduate student Club, which has been met with very enthusiastically.  They have big plans, as you can see in their article on page two.

The Department has expanded its Colloquium series.  Since Fall, 2003 the Department has held 32 Colloquia, with half of the speakers being from outside the University.  The Department is also hosting Southern Ontario Matrices and Statistics Days, to be held June 9-10, 2005.  More details can be found in an article on page 13.

The past year has not been without losses.  We have lost two long-time faculty members, Dr. J.F. (Fred) McDonald, and Dr. Harold Atkinson.  Both will be missed by colleagues and students alike.  Faculty members have written tributes on page three.

Overall, the past two years have been very productive.  We have accomplished a great deal for a Department with only twelve full-time faculty.  I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate everyone on their successes over the past two years.  Thank you to the Department staff for all their hard work .  I wish everyone all the best for 2005.

Together we succeed!

S. Ejaz Ahmed, Head

Message from the Provost

I am delighted to welcome this inaugural issue of the Math and Stats Newsletter.  The Department has undergone a revival over the past few year teaching many new students and seeing scholarship bloom among its members. As this issue shows, change is the one reliable and predictable but unquantifiable variable (or is it quantifiable?).  Whether it’s the dean's new golf scheduling program or the arrival of new faculty and the transitions of older ones, things are changing at Mathematics and Statistics  -- you can count on it!

My very best wishes to the Department on this new and useful publication."

Neil Gold

Provost

Message from the Dean

Welcome to the first issue of  the Department's newsletter.  It is appropriate that the Department is reviving the practice of publishing a newsletter, as so much else in the Department has seen a revival as well.  The old “Undergraduate Teaching Assistantship Award (UTAA)” has been replaced with the “Outstanding Scholars” program, the number of undergraduate and graduate students has grown to  levels reminiscent of the “good old days”, and, since the publication of the last issue of the old newsletter, all staff members are new and there are four new permanent faculty members including a new Head, Dr. Ahmed.  The past few years have seen dramatic change and growth, and there is more excitement yet to come.  This newsletter will serve as an important record of these dynamic, exciting times.

Richard Caron
Dean, Faculty of Science

New Faces

Dr. Xueqing Chen and Dr. Xing  Jiang began one-year limited-term contracts in July, 2004.

Mr. Sam Hoda began his duties as Math Demonstrator, in September, 2004.

Departures

Dr. Nader Zamani completed the process to transfer to the Department of Mechanical, Automotive  and Materials Engineering.  He hasn’t really left, though.  He still teaches courses for the Department on overload.

New arrivals

The younger members of the Department know that when Fred latched onto a problem he held on like a bulldog until it was solved. Unfortunately, Fred has now lost his long battle with cancer and we miss him.

   Daniel J. Britten

Harold Atkinson

Harold Atkinson, a member of the Department almost since the University was formed, passed away on December 23, 2004.  He had served twice as  Head of the Department and was very involved in liason with the area highschools.  He was well-known in the community for his committment to a number of social justice and environmenal causes.  He was a founder of the Windsor Folk Music Society and remained involved with it, even singing at the Acoustic Stage 2 weeks before his death. He was  a welcome  member of the Real Analysis Exchange group to the end. 

Students and professors of the Department will remember him as ever helpful and a very easy person to work with. Sadly, we will never again hear him sing about the poor negative epsilon that had no delta.

   Tim Traynor

Early last semester, Dr. Ahmed held a general meeting for all Math and Statistics undergraduate students interested in discussing any issues or concerns they had. What he wanted to discuss most of all was the possibility of starting a club for students interested in mathematics and statistics. Despite the enticement of doughnuts and pop, very few people showed up. However, every person there was extremely excited at the prospect of such a club, and since then we have more than doubled our membership list.

And so the Math + Stats Club began. Some of our goals are to promote an appreciation for interesting mathematics (rather than repetitive homework assignments), an awareness of the necessity of mathematics and mathematicians in a wide variety of fields, and an active involvement in improving both our campus and Windsor community.

With these goals in mind, we have already planned several lectures, some pi(e) day festivities, and an “Applied Statistics Experimentation” night, the proceeds of which will be going to charity. We will also be selling “First-Year Math and Stats Cheat-Shirts”, with proceeds going to founding an entrance bursary for Math and Stats majors. We also hope to be able to get out to the area high schools to show them what is available at the University of Windsor.

Thank you all for the support you have shown so far, and we look forward to seeing you at our Math + Stats events in the future.

Allison Oldfield, President

The program was attended by more than 25 students, as well as approximately 20 faculty and guests. Dr. Bernard Gendron from the University of Montreal gave the keynote address on an efficient implementation of an integer program for generating weekly schedules of 3000 employees in a network of 400 stores in Quebec. Dr. Elfaki Hassini from McMaster University made a presentation on academic job search, which was followed by a panel discussion by Dr. Richard Caron, Dean of the Faculty of Science here at the University, and Dr. Leo Oriet, Chair, Department of Industrial Manufacturing Systems Engineering. Dr. Reza Lashkari, also from the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, gave information on Canadian Operational Research Society diploma.

During the afternoon session a total of fourteen students presented their works and participated in the student paper presentation competition. First prize was given to Douglas Woolford from the University of Western Ontario for his paper entitled “Exploring Lightning and Fire Ignition Data Using Sharpening Techniques”.

Second prize was awarded to Zhuo Zheng from McMaster Unievrsity for his paper entitled “Optimal SS FP Pulse-Sequence Design for Tissue Density Estimation”. The papers were judged on a variety of criterion by Drs. Yash Aneja, Richard Caron, Matt Davison, Elfaki Hassini, Myron Hlynka, and Reza Lashkari.

A big thank-you goes out to all who attended or participated in the event!

For more information on WindSOR/Sword 2004, and to obtain a copy of the keynote address, please go to http://athena.uwindsor.ca/units/research/ORGroup.nsf/inToc/BAD6D384BB227B1EB85256EA7007127F6

SWORD participants pose outside of Vanier Hall

back to Contents

Faculty of Science Annual Celebration of Success

On Friday, November 19, 2004, the Faculty of Science held it's Annual Celebration of Success, to celebrate the accomplishments of members of the Faculty of Science over the past year..  The theme this year was "Olympic" in scope, with members of "Team Science" receiving mousepads.  Award winners received a "Gold medal" and a certificate honouring their respective accomplishments.

The following members of the Department were honoured:

OGS winners: Jianhua Hu, Chris Tavolieri, Dawei Zheng

OGSST winners:        Krishna Saha

NSERC AND OGSST Scholarship winners:        Lihua An

Some of the awards presented had a humourous theme.  The Department won the "Speedo" award for being the first Department to submit all of its grades for the Fall semester.  The Department's name goes on a plaque adorned with a "Speedo" bathing suit.

Dr. Myron Hlynka was recognized for his internationally renowned website on Queuing Theory and for the promotion of Queuing theory in the media.  The award included a jar with used Casino Dice, which were perhaps loaded.  

Dr. Karen Fung was presented with the "Triple Crown" award in recognition of receiving grants from NSERC, SSHRC AND CIHR.  Her award included a crown with three points, one for each granting agency.

Awards were also given out to the faculty member and sessional instructor from each Department who received the highest teaching score for total students taught over one hundred.  This year's winners were Dr. Alan Gold for the faculty, and Dr. Sharif Musameh for the Sessional instructors.

S.E. Ahmed, “Assessing the process capability index for non-normal processes”, Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference, 129 (2005) 195-206.

S.E. Ahmed and W. J. Krzanowski, “Biased estimation in a smiple multivariate regression model”, Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, 45:689-696, 2004.

S. Buhamra, N. Al-Kandarri and S.E. Ahmed, “Inference concerning quantile for left truncated and right censored data”, Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, 46:819-831, 2004.

N. Al-Kandarri, S. Buhamra, S.M. Khan and S.E. Ahmed, “On the estimation of intraclass correlation coefficients: a shrinkage pretest perspective”, Journal of Statistical Research, 46:819-831, 2004

D.J. Britten, O. Khomenko, F. Lemire, V.Mazorchuck, “Reducibility of Torsion Free n Modules of Finite Degree”.  J. of Algebra, 276:129-142, 2004.

Chen, X. “Root Vectors of the Composition Algebra of the Kronecker Algebra”,   Algebra and Discrete Mathematics, Number 1. Jan 2004. 37-56.

Chen, X. “Properly Stratified Endomorphism Algebras” (with Vlastimil Dlab),       Journal of Algebra, Volume 283, No.1, Jan 2005. 63-79.

Duggal K.L., Atindogbe, C., “Conformal screen on lightlike hypersurfaces”, International Jour-nal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, Volume 11, No. 4,  2004, pages 421-442.

Fung, K.Y., Krewski, D., Burnett, R., Dominici, F. (2004) “Testing the harvesting hypothesis by time domain analysis, Part I-- Baseline analysis”, J. of Toxicology and Environmental Health, In press.

Fung, K.Y., Krewski, D., Burnett, R., Ramsay, T., Chen, Y. (2004) “Testing the harvesting hypothesis by time domain analysis, Part II--Models with covariates”, J. of Toxicology and Environmental Health, In press.

Tan, J.K.L., Morneau, K., Fung, K.Y. (2004) “Randomized controlled trial of pimecrolimus 1% cream for treatment of facial acne vulgaris”, Accepted for publication in American Academy of Dermatology.

Fung, K.Y., Luginaah, I., Gorey, K.M., Webster, G. (2005) “Air pollution and daily hospital admissions for cardiovascular diseases in Windsor, Ontario”, Canadian Journal of Public Health, vol. 96, 29-33.

Z. Hu, “A generalized Kakutani-Kodaira theorem”, accepted on June 2004, to appear in the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society.

Z. Hu and M. Neufang, “Decomposability of von Neumann algebras and Mazur property of higher level”, accepted on September 2004, to appear in the Canadian Journal of Mathematics.

P.N. Kaloni and J. X. Lou, “Weakly nonlinear instability of a ferromagnet fluid rotating about a vertical axis” Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials, Vol. 284C, pp.54-68, 2004

P.N. Kaloni and J.X. Lou, “Convective instability of magnetic fluids” Physical Review E, Vol. 70, pp. 026313-1-026313-12, 2004.

S. Grimm, F. Lemire, J. Patera, Discrete group transformations on SU(2)X SU(2) and SU(3), authors Resenhas of Instituto de Mathematica e Estatistica, Univ. of Sao Paulo, (2004) Vol. 6 No. 2 pp 199-214.

Antoine Derighetti, Mahmoud Filali, and Mehdi Sangani Monfared, “On the ideal structure of some Banach algebras related to convolution operators on L^p(G) ” Journal of Functional Analysis, Vol. 215, pp. 341-365, 2004

Paul, S.R. “Goodness of Fit of the geometric distribution: an application to human fecundability data”, Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods, 3:2004

Paul, S.R., Xing, Jiang, Rai, S. and Balasoorya, U. “Tests of treatment effect in pre-drug and post-drug count data”, Statistics in Medicine, 23:1541-1554, 2004

Sydney Bulman-Fleming, Eckehart Hotzel and Jing Wang, Semigroups that are factors of subdirectly irreducible semigroups by their monolith, Algebra Universalis, 51 (2004), 1-7.

S.J. Pride and Jing Wang, Relative rewriting systems, in Semigroups and Languages (ed. I.M. Araujo, M.J. Branco, V.H. Fernandes and G.M. Gomes), World Scientific, 2004, 196-211.

Chapters in Books

Paul, S. R. Applications of the beta distribution. In  Handbook of the Beta Distribution (2004). Edited by A. K. Gupta,and S. Nadarajah,S.Marcell Dekker

Conferences

Ahmed, S.E., Improved estimation in LTRC model. McMaster, November, 2004 (Invited)

Ahmed, S.E., Achievements through higher education. AMSE conference, Chicago, September 2004 (Invited)

Ahmed, S.E., Estimating reliability functions, University of Southern Illinois at Carmendale, September, 2004 (Invited)

Ahmed, S.E., Inference concerning quantile for left-truncated and right-censored data.  University of North Carolina, May, 2004 (Invited)

Ahmed, S.E., Estimating the parameters of Birnbaum-Saunders lifetime distribution, IISA, Athens, GA, May, 2004 (Invited)

Zhang, Z., Barron, R.M., An, C.-F. (2004) "Spectral analysis of air flow over a cavity", Proceedings of the 4th Computational Aeroacoustics Workshop on Benchmark Problems, NASA/CP-2004-212954, pp. 197-204.

D. J. Britten, F. W. Lemire and C. Tavolieri,  On a basis realization of torsion free An modules. Annual Meeting of the American Mathematical Society in Atlanta, January 6,2005 (Invited) Presented by Dan Britten.

Caron, R., “Finding Feasible Points in Nonlinear Programs”, Invited Session with two speakers, CORS/INFORMS Joint Conference, Banff, Alberta, May 2004.

Caron, R., “A Random Method for Finding Feasibility in Nonlinear Programmes”, CORS/INFORMS Joint Conference, Banff, Alberta, May 2004.

Z. Hu and M. Neufang, Decomposability of von Neumann algebras on locally compact groups, The Spring Conference on Banach Spaces, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, April 18-24, 2004.

Z. Hu, A Kakutani-Kodaira theorem for von Neumann algebras on locally compact groups, The 2004 Canadian Symposium on Abstract Harmonic Analysis, The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, May 17-18, 2004.

Z. Hu and M. Neufang, How to count projections in von Neumann algebras,  The 2004 Canadian Operator Symposium, The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, May 19-23, 2004.

Z. Hu and M. Neufang, Decomposability of von Neumann algebras and applications, The Summer 2004 Meeting of the Canadian Mathematical Society, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, June 13-15, 2004.

Z. Hu, Maximally decomposable von Neumann algebras and the spectrum of L_\infty(G), The 2004 International Conference on Abstract Harmonic Analysis, Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey, July 12-17, 2004.

Frank W. Lemire, Daniel J. Britten and Justin Lariviere. Decomposition of Tensor Products of Torsion Free Cn-modules of finite degree and simple finite dimensional modules. Preliminary report. 1003, Atlanta, Georgia, SS 23A, AMS Special Session on Representations of Lie Algebras, Annual Meeting of the American Mathematical Society, Atlanta, January, 2005.  Presented by Frank Lemire.

Saha, K., and Paul S. R. (2004). Bias Corrected maximum likelihood estimator of the negative binomial dispersion parameter.  Joint Statistical meetings (JSM) of the American Statistical association, International Biometric Society and Statistical Society of Canada.

Deng, D. and Paul, S. R. (2004). Generalized linear model, zero- inflation and over- dispersion. Joint Statistical meetings (JSM) of the American Statistical association, International Biometric Society and Statistical Society of Canada.

Paul, S. R., Xing, Jiang (2004). Tests of treatment effect in pre-drug and post-drug count data.  Joint Statistical meetings (JSM) of the American Statistical association, International Biometric Society and Statistical Society of Canada.

Dr. Krishan L. Duggal

Professor Emeritus K. L. Duggal  organized a special session "Geometric Analysis in Mathe-matical Physics" at the fourth World Congress of Nonlinear Analysts  in Orlando, FL, June 30-July 7, 2004.

There were 15 leading invited speakers from Spain, Korea, Greece, Germany, USA and Canada.

Dr. Duggal also delivered a 45 minutes invited talk at this conference on "Conformal vector fields on general relativistic spacetimes and intitial data".

Dr. Zhiguo Hu: Organizing  Committee for conference

Dr. Hu was one of the organizers for The 2004 Canadian Symposium on Abstract Harmonic Analysis, sponsored by The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences and held at the University of Western Ontario on May 17-18, 2004. Thirty two mathematicians from Britain, Canada, Italy, Switzerland and the United States participated in this conference. Both Dr. Hu and Dr. Monfared from this department gave their research presentations.

Dr. Purna N. Kaloni (also presented papers)

25^th Canadian Applied and Industrial Math Faculty and 16^th Canadian Symposium on Fluid Dynamics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, June 12-15, 2004

International Conference on Magnetic Fluids, Guaruja, Sao Paulo, and Brazil, August 2-6, 2004

1) NSERC Discovery—Modeling and analysis of exposure-response data from toxicological and epidemiology, $87,500, 2004-2009.

2) SSHRC—Community health study in the Sarnia Area of Concern, $113,400, 2004-2007, as a co-applicant.

3) CIHR—Social, prognostic and therapeutic factors associated with breast cancer survival in Canada and the U.S., $353,040, 2004-2009, as a co-applicant.

News of this award appeared in the Daily News as well as the Windsor Star.

She also received a contract from Health Canada to conduct a “Spatial Monitoring Program” in Windsor. $31,749, 2004, as a co-applicant.

Please submit all answers to Samid Hoda in the MRC. Undergraduate students are invited to attempt the graduate problems as well.

Undergraduate Level

Calculus I

Suppose we have a function f which is both continuous and differentiable. We also know that f(6) = -2 and f ‘ (x)≤10. What is the largest possible value for f (15)?

Vector Calculus

Evaluate 

Linear Algebra

Prove that every monic polynomial over the reals is the characteristic polynomial of some matrix over the reals.

Algebra

Let G be a finite group. Prove that if the set of elements g of G with the property that g² = 1 form a subgroup, then that subgroup is a normal Abelian subgroup of G.

Let R be a ring with 1 Î R.  Suppose that  r Î R has the property that r ⁿ = 0  for some positive integer n. Prove that u = 1 + r + r² + …. = r²⁰⁰⁴  is invertible in R.

Analysis

Prove that sup cos(n) = 1 using the fact that for any irrational number a and any e>0 there exist integers a and b such that | a a -b|< e.

Probability

Let m and n be positive integers. Show that

There are three doors. Behind one of them is a prize of a car. Behind the other two there is nothing. A contestant chooses a door. Monty ALWAYS picks one of the other doors, opens it, and ALWAYS there is nothing behind the door Monty opened (since Monty knows where the car is). The contestant is given an opportunity to change his/her choice to the other remaining unopened door. Should the contestant switch or not? What is the probability of the contestant winning the car, if the contestant selects the optimal strategy?

Graduate Level:

What is the largest number which divides every number of the form p⁴-1 for primes p>5?

1. Show that is divisible by n! for each positive integer n.

2. Determine

The Putnam Mathematical Competition for Undergraduate Students will be held on Saturday, December 4^th, 2004. Times are 10am-1pm and 3pm-6pm in Room 9118, Lambton Tower. See Dr. Hlynka for additional details.

Actuarial Exams

Actuarial Exams #1-4 were given Nov. 1-4, 2004, in Room 9118 Lambton Tower. Dr. Hlynka was the exam supervisor. The next set of Actuarial Exams will be written in May, 2005. See Dr. Hlynka for details.

Math Grad Student Wins Table Tennis Tournament

On October 1^st, Madhan Balagurusamy participated in the Table Tennis Tournament held by Campus Recreation at the St. Denis Centre. Out of approximately 20 players, Madhan won 1^st place. Congratulations!  (special thanks to Campus Rec newsletter for information)

Analysis Seminar

 The Analysis Seminar of the department is held every Friday at 3:00PM in LT 9-118. This weekly seminar started on September 2003. Besides the talks from the faculty members, some visitors to the department also gave talks on their research in the seminar. The current series of talks are on the recently developed Operator Space Theory, which is also called the quantization of Banach space theory.

Dr. Caron, and his team of undergrad research students — Sandra Eozzcetto, Luiza Ilea and Shashi Khatri — wrote the scheduling program, which now runs in a Windows environment.

Dr. Caron has placed the program on his website www.uwindsor. ca/rcaron.  All he asks is that anyone who uses it send a cheque to the faculty’s graduate scholarship fund.

NSERC distributed a silver pin to each researcher who has held a grant since its inception.  Congratulations to Ronald Barron, Daniel Britten, Krishan Duggal, Karen Fung, Purna Kaloni, Francis Lemire, Chi Song Wong   

This first Southern Ontario Matrices and Statistics Days aims to be a forum for the exchange of ideas for researchers in statistics, linear algebra and matrix theory.  The purpose is to stimulate research and, in an informal setting, to foster the interaction of researchers in the interface between statistics and matrix theory. Further, this meeting will provide a forum for the discussion of research topics emerging from some statistical applications which involve the use of linear algebraic methods.

This event is a follow-up to the Fields Institute Special Session on Matrices and Statistics at the 2003 annual meeting of the Statistical Society of Canada (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, June 2003) and the series of International Workshops on Matrices and Statistics held almost every year since 1990

Speakers include: