Stetson senior Abigail Denton, who is majoring in Mathematics, recently placed third in the integration bee competition at the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Florida section annual conference, which was held at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University on Feb. 21-22.

“I was really surprised at first,” she said. “I was a little disappointed by how I answered a few questions, but I think I was able to get quality over quantity.”

The integration bee competition requires participants to evaluate 20 integrals of varying complexity during a 60-minute setting.

“The fact that Abby placed is a hallmark to her skills and abilities as it relates to her calculus knowledge,” said Michael Schroeder, PhD, assistant professor of Mathematics.

During the conference, Denton also presented her research project titled “Primitive Star Decompositions of Complete Graphs.”

Denton started to work on her research back in December 2023. What attracted her to the topic of graph decompositions was how easy graph theory is to grasp.

“You see a graph, and it’s just edges and nodes,” she said. “There’s a lot you can work with there, especially for beginner mathematicians. … You can think of graph decompositions as a network, or even just Christmas tree lights. If one light goes out, how many lights would go out after that one? So, it’s very applicable to real life, and I think that’s why I like it so much.”

After presenting her project at the MAA conference, Denton had the opportunity to make another oral presentation on her research at the 56th Southeastern International Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing, March 3-7 at Florida Atlantic University.

“Anytime we encourage activities in which the students have to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps in order to make progress, it creates a soft skill that will be valuable to them once they get into industry or into further education,” Schroeder said. “When I first spoke to Abby about possibly doing some work with me, I gave her a quick presentation on some of the things that I work on. And, after seeing two or three topics, she picked the one she said was most interesting to her.”

Denton aspires to attend graduate school, pursue her PhD in mathematics and eventually become a professor. Her experience at FAU, she said, allowed her to dive deeper into her research.

“Some of the questions I was asked during my presentation were questions I hadn’t considered,” she said. “But I think those will provide me a good direction to take in grad school, as I’d like to expand on this project using some of those questions I was asked.”

Denton received travel funding from a National Science Foundation grant through the Southeastern conference at FAU and some additional funding from the College of Arts and Science, as well as the Math and Computer Science department.

Mathematics major students Naya Adla, Isabelle Condor da Silva, Cornelius Mulyokela and Tory Wojnarowski also attended the MAA conference. Adla presented a poster on her work with Tom Vogel, PhD, associate professor of Math and Computer Science, titled “Tracking Hate Speech on Twitter among the Arab Region using Python-Based Tools.” Wojnarowski and Mulyokela also participated in the integration bee competition.

– Stetson Today