When: Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 7pm

Where: UNC Asheville

Who: Dr. Edward Burger

On:    Monkeys, Mathematics, and Mischief:   What are the lifelong   lessons of education?

How useful is math really? How often do you 'solve for x' in your everyday life? Here we'll have a lively look at the point of education and how can we apply life lessons learned in math to see our world and ourselves in a clearer way.  We'll contemplate these lofty ideas while considering the antics of monkeys. No mathematics will be explicitly mentioned.  If you hate mathematics, this talk is for you.  If the sight of an equation makes you ill, this talk is for you.  If you never thought you'd ever go to a math lecture again, this talk is for you!

Edward Burger is Professor of Mathematics and Lissack Professor for Social Responsibility and Personal Ethics at Williams College. He is the author of over 30 research articles and 12 books including the Holt McDougal Middle School and High School series. He is also the star of over 2000 entertaining mathematics videos associated with the series. Burger was awarded the 2000 Northeastern Section of the MAA Award for Distinguished Teaching and 2001 MAA Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo National Award for Distinguished Teaching of Mathematics. The MAA named him the 2001-2003 Polya Lecturer. He was awarded the 2003 Residence Life Teaching Award from the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 2004 he was awarded Mathematical Association of America's Chauvenet Prize and in 2006 he was a recipient of the Lester R. Ford Prize. In 2007 and 2008 he received two awards for his Holt video work.  In 2007 Williams College awarded him the Nelson Bushnell Prize for Scholarship and Teaching.  Burgeris an associate editor of the American Mathematical Monthly and Math Horizons Magazine and serves as a Trustee of the Kenan Institute for the Arts at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.  In 2006, Reader's Digest listed Burger in their annual "100 Best of America" as America's Best Math Teacher. In 2010 he appeared on a mathematics segment with Lester Holt for NBC-TV on the Today Show and throughout the 2010 Winter Olympic coverage. He is the winner of the 2010 Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching---the largest ($250,000) and most prestigious prize in higher education teaching and scholarship across all disciplines in the English speaking world.

For more information visist:

http://www2.unca.edu/math/parsons_lecture/current/Parsons_Current.asp

*Text and Information from the UNCA website.