Celebrate Math Awareness Month in April
April 6, 2011
As this (print) issue of SIAM News arrives in readers' mailboxes, the Math Awareness Month poster should be available in math sciences departments. A full-page version appears in this issue on page 10; we encourage readers to use the materials at www.mathaware.org to get their students interested in unraveling complex systems.
As mentioned previously in SIAM News, the field offers much to explore. The posted materials, a good beginning, include essays by experts in various aspects of the field, along with numerous links to published articles. Three recently posted essays, from modeling/simulation scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, describe interactions among a synthetic U.S. population as they affect the spread of transmissible diseases (Sara Del Valle and James P. Smith); a study of the connections and interdependencies of important components of the national infrastructure (Darrin Visarraga); and the use of input�output methods to estimate short-term economic consequences of catastrophic events (Brian Edwards and Mary Ewers).
Thanks to all who coordinated the Math Awareness Month 2011 effort, including Joceline Lega and the members of her committee, and the authors of the essays---John Guckenheimer ("Organisms as Complex Systems") and Paul Hines, Benjamin O'Hara, Eduardo Cotilla-Sanchez, and Christopher Danforth ("Cascading Failures: Extreme Properties of Large Blackouts in the Electric Grid"), in addition to those mentioned here.
