Celebrating QR Connections

The "Celebrating QR Connections" series, sponsored by Ellen Genat Hoffman, '68 and Stephen G. Hoffman, celebrates the connection between quantitative reasoning and various disciplines.

Run every third semester, each series involves three to five events -- hands-on workshops, lectures, or debates -- clustered in a month’s time.  These events are open to Wellesley College students, faculty, staff, and friends.  The first series examined the relationship between QR and art; the second, QR and biology.  Details for the more recent series are presented below, and for several of these, recordings are available on iTunes U

QR and Anthropology (Fall 2014)

Paleoanthropology and the Fossil Record:  Quantitative Reasoning with Big Bad Data

Adam Van Arsdale – Associate Professor of Anthropology, Wellesley College. Oftentimes the data available for research is less than ideal. In these circumstances, the challenges posed by the data can often drive our analytical approach, potentially biasing the conclusions we might draw. These problems are exacerbated when the sample available for study is small. Prof. Van Arsdale’s talk focuses on how these issues can be examined in paleoanthropology, in which the data is not only complex – human fossils of variable preservation and temporal certainty – but limited in scope.        

Anthropological Applications of Social Network Analysis:  Focus on Food, Health, and Culture in the US South

Sarah Szurek, Medical Anthropologist at the University of Florida. Dr. Szurek discusses her ethnographic research on food, culture, and social networks in the southeast United States. Dr. Szurek specializes in the systematic investigation of cultural knowledge and uses social network analysis to examine individuals’ and groups’ understanding of food and the food environment. She presents research from recent projects on diabetes risk among Latinos in Alabama and a local food movement in Florida.

Prehistory by the Numbers: Remote Sensing and Numerical Models of Ancient Socio-environmental Dynamics in Southern Peru

Ben Vining, Visiting Professor of Anthropology, Wellesley College. As our concern for recent environmental change grows, archaeology offers invaluable insights into how cultural and environmental change intersect over the long-term. Palaeoclimatic and archaeological investigations in southern Peru show stable land use over the past several millennia, despite climatic changes. Using satellite imagery and geospatial modeling, Prof. Vining reconstructs cultural decisions that shaped land use. Sustained interactions contributed to strong mutualism between culture and environmental systems, which continue to be important today.

QR and Engineering (Spring 2013)
 

Designing for the Developing World:  The Misconceptions, Challenges, and Adventure

Jodie Wu, founder and CEO of Global Cycle Solutions, a social enterprise that develops and distributes simple technologies that improve the lives of smallholder farmers, discusses and demonstrates some of the technologies developed while at MIT and at her company in Arusha, Tanzania, and highlights the various ways in which quantitative reasoning skills are essential in the design, testing, and improvement of these technologies.

Allometry Brings Together Engineers, Anthropologists, and Statisticians

Catherine Carneal, Biomechanical Engineer, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Brian Corner, Research Anthropologist in Biomechanics and Barry Decristofano, Chemical Engineer, both at the US Army Natick Soldier RD&E Center, explain how their search for information to confirm an assumption about potential scaling laws between internal and external anatomy - known as allometry - led engineers, anthropologists, radiologists, computer scientists, and statisticians to look for a way to draw conclusions about what we can't see inside a body from measurements we can make on the outside. Information gained from their research will enable development of highly accurate human models which can be applied in the fields of safety and protection, medical device development, and personalized medicine

Engineering at All Ages

Kristin Sargianis and Melissa Higgins, from the Boston Museum of Science’s “EiE: Engineering Is Elementary” Program, ask: What does engineering (and quantitative reasoning) look like in elementary school? What foundational engineering practices do students need as they move from elementary, middle, and high school into college? After engaging in a hands-on engineering challenge ourselves, we visit real elementary school classrooms via video, observe students in action, and discuss how what we see can translate to the university level and beyond.

Machine Learning and Data Mining:  How BIG data is having a BIG impact in Medicine, Finance, Sports and More

QR and Sustainability (Fall 2011)

Sustainability on College Campuses

Jason Hamilton, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Sciences at Ithaca College, explores the academic and intellectual framework of “Sustainability” and the role it plays in dealing with our current environmental, social, and economic dilemmas.  Drawing on his experiences at Ithaca College, he describes the role of education on sustainability across the college curriculum and in practice on campus, as a way to move us toward a more secure future.

Sustainable Cities

Joyce Klein Rosenthal, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, draws on her expertise in environmental planning, sustainable development, and the public health effects of urbanization to take us from the history and design of cities to discuss the environmental impacts of urbanization and analyses of climate-related effects on health in today’s urban areas. Lecture available on iTunes U.

Sustainability is Good Business

Sierra Nevada has won numerous awards for its beer and for its sustainability practices. The company's sustainability coordinator, Cheri Chastain, explains how the brewing company tracks and reports key performance indicators in energy, water, agriculture, transportation, recycling/recovery, greenhouse gases, and more for both our environment and the company’s bottom line. The Sierra Nevada case study illustrates how science and economics are intertwined in sustainability. Lecture available on iTunes U.