Saturday, November 3, 2012

Hergert Numbers AMATYC Talk

On Saturday November 10th, I'll be giving a talk at the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges (AMATYC) Annual Conference. The title of my talk is "What's an Inflection Point?" and will look at the various definitions of inflection point that have appeared in Calculus textbooks over the years. I'll also talk about the efforts of a math professor to convince people that the term "flexpoint" would be a better word for what we currently call an "inflection point". If I get the chance, I may throw in a mention of Hergert Numbers.

The content of my talk was assembled from four papers published between 1938 and 1968. For anyone interested, I've posted these papers at the URL's found below.

Ewing paper (1938)
Bruckner paper (1962)
Walker paper (1956)
Mulcrone paper (1968)