Projects

1. Professor Gray reviews mathematical fiction for the journal Mathematical Intelligencer. Her most recent review to appear discusses six mysteries that involve mathematics, including The Da Vinci Code. She has just finished a review of Alex Kasman’s Reality Conditions.
Click on a link below to download a pdf with more information:
The Mathematics of Mystery-Review 6
Reality Conditions

2. Ph.D. students from underrepresented minorities are supported by Professor Gray’s grant from the Alfred P. Sloan foundation. Her NSF grant supports undergraduate mathematics and computer science students. In the past 43 Palestinian and Syrian students have come to study at American University for master’s degrees in statistics and computer science under Professor Gray’s Karim Rida Said Foundation grant. Seventeen students have gone on to receive Ph.D.’s at American University or elsewhere and five are currently enrolled in doctoral studies.

3. Reflecting her long-time interest in human rights, Professor Gray has just finished an article, The Statistics of Genocide, for an upcoming book on statistics and human rights. She has also initiated training in the use of statistics in reporting on human rights violations for the staff of Amnesty International in London.
Click on the link below to download a pdf with more information:
The Statistics of Genocide + maps

4. Another major interest is in ethics in statistics, a topic of her presentation at the recent Joint Statistical Meeting of American statistical societies in Minneapolis. The session she organized focused on integrating statistics into the teaching of statistics, She also serves on the risk analysis advisory panel for the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Click on the link below to download a pdf with more information:
Ethical Considerations Ottawa
Ottawa Abstract
Sydney, Jan-30-05

5. Harvard President Larry Summers created considerable controversy last winter by suggesting that women are less able to do science and mathematics than are men. Professor Gray will address this issue at a student-organized session at American University in September and also at the annual meeting of the American Mathematical Society next January in San Antonio.

6. How the public perception of statistics depends heavily on what the media report. To talk about how statisticians can better interact with journalists and how journalists can be better trained in statistics, Professor Gray has organized a session for the International Congress on the Teaching of Statistics, scheduled for July 2006 in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. There will be statisticians and journalists from Brazil, New Zealand, Canada, and Finland on the program.
http://www.maths.otago.ac.nz/home/home.php

7. Reflecting her interest in the progress of women in mathematics, Professor Gray, who founded the Association for Women in Mathematics, has recently become the president-elect of the Caucus for Women in Statistics. She has also written extensively on gender and mathematics, including an article on Sophie German, a nineteenth century French mathematician.http://www.maths.otago.ac.nz/icots7/icots7.php
Click on the link below to download a pdf with more information:
Sex and Mathematics-Summers