Mathematics faculty and student team up to write, publish work in journal

Neil Nicholson, North Central College assistant professor of mathematics, and mathematics major Rebecca Rachan ’16 coauthored and published an article, titled “On weak lattice point visibility,” in Involve: A Journal of Mathematics.

The ideas of their paper are best explained using a real-world example, says Nicholson: “Imagine a marching band standing in a rectangular formation, with the musicians standing in rows and columns. A photographer external to the formation wishing to take a photo of a particular trumpeter can only do so if no other musician blocks her view of that trumpeter. In this paper, we determine necessary and sufficient conditions for when the photographer can view the trumpeter.”

In fall 2016, Rachan will start a Ph.D. program in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at The University of Iowa.

Click here to view Nicholson’s faculty profile.