Online Verisons of Some Presentations
of Robert Gardner

(1989)

History of Math and Science Presentations

  1. "The Bicentennial of Evariste Galois," presented to the Math and Statistics Department, October 14, 2011: Website to link to presentation and photos.
  2. "Archimedes: 2,000 Year Ahead of His Time," presented to the Math Department, March 18, 2011: PowerPoint.
  3. Euclid's Elements - A 2,500 Year History: A history of Euclid's book, with little mathematical content.
  4. Euler Tricentennial Presentation: A historical presentation with some mathematical content.
  5. "The Wright Brothers: A Centennial Tribute." Of related interest is my presentation on "The Wright Brothers, Bernoulli, and a Surprise from Upper East Tennessee": PDF, PS.
  6. "Albert Einstein - A Centennial Celebration of His Miraculous Year."
  7. The Space Age Turns 50 - Ideas of Spaceflight from the Early 20th Century."

Presentations at Meetings (AMS/MAA/etc.)

  1. "Cyclic and Bicyclic Decompositions of the Complete Graph into the 4-Cycle with a Pendant Edge" with Daniel "Lupo" Cantrell and Gary "Hoser" Coker, presented at the 2010 Southeastern MAA Conference Elon University; Elon, NC: PowerPoint.
  2. "Integrating The Three Stooges into Trigonometry" with Robert Davidson, presented at the 2010 Southeastern MAA Conference Elon University; Elon, NC: PowerPoint.
  3. Triple Systems from Graph Decompositions (in PowerPoint), AMS Fall Southeastern Meeting, Huntsville, AL, October 25, 2008.
  4. "Some Graph, Digraph, and Mixed Graph Results Concerning Decompositions, Packings and Coverings," Joint AMS MAA Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, January 2005.
  5. "Introductory Level Analysis: Synthesizing R, Rn, Metric Spaces and Topological Spaces,"82nd Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Section of the MAA, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, March 2003. (Also available in PostScript.)
  6. Some Results on the Location of Zeros of a Polynomial, presented at the 1001 Fall Southeastern Section Meeting of the American Mathematical Society, Meeting #970, University of Tennessee - Chattanooga, October 5, 2001.
  7. "Dealing with Infinite Dimensional Vector Spaces in Sophomore Linear Algebra," 80th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Section of the Mathematical Association of America at Huntingdon College in March, 2001. (Also available in PostScript.)
  8. On the Location of the Zeros of a Polynomial, presented at Kent State University, September 29, 1994.

Departmental Seminars

  1. Bernstein Inequalities for Polynomials, a 20th anniversary presentation of my interview talk at ETSU; March 8, 2013.
  2. "What the Hell do Graph Decompositions have to do with Experimental Designs," presented to the Math and Statistics Department, January 27, 2012: PowerPoint (prepared in PowerPoint 2010).
  3. "Dr. Bob's Favorite Results on Polynomials," presented to the Math and Statistics Department, September 2, 2011: PowerPoint.
  4. "Permutation Groups: Cycles, Transpositions, and Futurama," presented to the TN Beta Chapter of Kappa Mu Epsilon, Fall 2010: PowerPoint.
  5. The Seminar on the History and Exploration of Math Problems: S.H.E.M.P.
  6. The Shape of Space PDF and PostScript.
  7. Non-Euclidean Geometry, highschool version: PDF.
  8. Translation Invariance and Finite Additivity in a Probability Measure on the Natural Numbers, based on work coauthored with Bob Price, presented to the ETSU Physics Department Seminar on April 19, 1999.
  9. Here are three presentation from ButtHead Seminars from the now inactive "Institute of Mathematical and Physical Sciences" (I.M.P.S.) dating from Spring 1998. These talks introduce ideas of Hilbert spaces and operators on Hilbert spaces, leading up to a discussion of the mathematics of quantum theory (the quantum material was presented by a former colleague, Dr. Nail Shanks [now deceased]).
  10. Infinite Dimensional Vector Spaces: How do you get there and what do you do when you're there?, presented in the ETSU Department of Physics Seminar, February 9, 1998. This was a precursor to the ButtHead presentations mentioned above.
  11. A Mathematician Looks at Chaos, presented in the ETSU Department of Physics Seminar, March 24, 1997.
  12. A Mathematician Looks at the Phase Plane, presented to the ETSU Department of Physics during 1997 or 1998.
  13. On the Location of the Zeros of a Polynomial, presented at Kent State University, September 29, 1994.
  14. "Bernstein Inequalities for Polynomials and Entire Functions, my interview presentation for my current job at ETSU from March 8, 1993.

Some Special Classnotes

  1. A mathematically clean derivation of Kepler's Three Laws of Planetary Motion: PDF (used in Calculus 3).
  2. Special Relativity Notes for Great Ideas in Science: PDF and PS.
  3. Notes for the "Meaning of Mathematics" are available in PDF and PS formats (used in most upper level math classes and Great Ideas in Science).
  4. Notes on "Infinity" are available in PDF and PS formats (used in Great Ideas in Science).
  5. Notes on "Euclidean Geometry" are available in PDF and PS formats.
  6. Notes on "NonEuclidean Geometry" are available in PDF and PS formats.
  7. The Banach-Tarski Paradox: PDF, PostScript (used in Real Analysis 1).
  8. Axiom of Choice: PDF, PostScript (used in Real Analysis 1).
  9. An alternate approach to measure theory: Inner and Outer Measure (used as supplement in Real Analysis 1).
  10. Notes on "Ordering the Complex Numbers" are available in PDF and PS formats (used in Complex Analysis 1).
  11. "Dr. Bob's Favorite Results on Complex Polynomials" (Departmental Seminar, September 2011) PowerPoint presentation (aimed at Complex Variables/Complex Analysis level students).
  12. Notes on "The Ilieff-Sendov Conjecture" are available in PDF and PostScript (aimed at Complex Variables/Complex Analysis level students).
  13. Introduction to Biological Evolution: PDF and PostScript (used as a supplement in Mathematical Biology).
  14. Evolution as Optimization: PDF and PostScript (used in Mathematical Biology).
  15. Natural Selection and the Fundamental Theorem: PDF and PostScript (used in Mathematical Biology).
  16. Adaptive Topographies: PDF and PostScript (used in Mathematical Biology).
  17. Supervised Teaching (MATH 5019) introductory notes: Teaching - The Mechanics.
  18. Supervised Teaching (MATH 5019) introductory notes: Teaching Policies.
  19. Introduction to Modern Algebra Supplement: A Student's Question: Why the Hell am I in this Class?. This is a motivational presentation which explains how classical algebra relates to modern algebra (group theory, ring theory, and field theory).
  20. Introduction to Modern Algebra Supplement: Small Groups.
  21. Introduction to Modern Algebra Supplement: Alternating Groups are Simple.
  22. Introduction to Modern Algebra Supplement: Finite Simple Groups.

American Astronomical Society Posters

After about 20 years of effort, my interest in astronomy is finally taking on a tiny bit of a professional air! I have given the following poster presentations at meetings of the American Astronomical Society:

  1. Visualizing the Big Bang: An Introduction to Topology and 3-Manifolds for Undergraduates At the 194th Meeting in Chicago, IL in June 1999.
  2. A Mathematically Sound Introduction to Relativity for Math, Physics and Astronomy Majors at the 195th Meeting in Atlanta, GA during January 2000.

Planetarium Shows

I have developed a few planetarium shows and presented them at the ETSU Planetarium (of which I am the codirector). I have created "virtual planetarium shows" of each. They include:

  1. "The Milky Way and Beyond!"
  2. "Mars: A Century of Exploration"
  3. "Relativity and Black Holes"
  4. "Dinosaurs: Their Lives, Their Deaths, and Their Evolution!"
  5. "The Wright Brothers: A Centennial Tribute." Of related interest is my presentation on "The Wright Brothers, Bernoulli, and a Surprise from Upper East Tennessee": PDF, PS.
  6. "Albert Einstein - A Centennial Celebration of His Miraculous Year."
  7. The Space Age Turns 50 - Ideas of Spaceflight from the Early 20th Century."
  8. 800 Million Miles from Home - Cassini at Saturn (a planetarium show given January 20, 2005), in preparation.
  9. Our Universe - A Guided Tour (a planetarium show for the Great Ideas in Science class), in preparation.

Observatory Open Houses

I have given a couple of different presentations at the open houses of the Harry Powell Observatory. They include:

  1. "The Shape of Space"
  2. "Mars, Here We Come!"

Astronomical "Expeditions"

Here are some simple webpages with photos of some astronomical events observed from Johnson City:

  1. Though the weather wasn't very cooperative, I did mount an "expedition" to the local Kroger parking lot to view the recent transit of Venus. Here's some details.
  2. The ETSU 2005 solar eclipse "expedition" also was plagued by clouds. Here's details on this one.

Return to Bob Gardner's webpage
Last updated: April 20, 2013.