Bowdoin Scholar to discuss meaning of achievement gap
A Bowdoin College mathematician will discuss the challenges of measuring differences in populations when he visits Skidmore Thursday, March 28, as the next speaker in the College’s Mathematics and computer Science Department Seminar Series.
Thomas Pietraho will discuss “No Statistician Left Behind: How (Not) to Measure the Student Achievement Gap” beginning at 6 p.m. March 28 in Emerson Auditorium, Palamountain Hall. Admission is free and open to the public. He will examine a common statistic used in the No Child Left Behind Act and explore just how well politicians understand the art of statistics.
An associate professor of mathematics at Bowdoin, Pietraho this spring is teaching courses in mathematical reasoning, linear algebra, and analysis. His research specialty is representation theory of reductive Lie groups, geometric quantization, and the combinatorics of representation theory, and he has published in such academic journals as Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics, Journal of Algebra, and New York Journal of Mathematics.
He also has researched mathematical applications to real-life challenges, and presented on measuring academic success and “On Gambling with Mathematicians.”
Pietraho holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Chicago and a doctorate from MIT.
