mathematics

Hortensia Soto

Hortensia Soto is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Hortensia Soto rather than just read about it. In short: Hortensia Soto is a Mexican–American mathematics educator who is a professor of mathematics at Colorado State University. In May 2018, she was appointed Associate Secretary of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA).

Key takeaways

Hortensia Soto belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Hortensia Soto to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Hortensia Soto from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Hortensia Soto is a Mexican–American mathematics educator who is a professor of mathematics at Colorado State University. In May 2018, she was appointed Associate Secretary of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). She became the president of the MAA in 2022.

Early life and education Soto was born in a sod house in Belén del Refugio, part of the municipality of Teocaltiche in Jalisco, Mexico. Her family moved to a farm near Morrill, Nebraska when she was one year old, and she grew up in Nebraska. Her talent for mathematics was encouraged in elementary school and recognized in high school; already at that age she was called on to act as a substitute mathematics teacher. At Eastern Wyoming College, Soto started a political science degree. She earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a master's degree in mathematics education from Chadron State College in Nebraska in 1988 and 1989, respectively. She earned a second master's degree in mathematics at the University of Arizona in 1994, and completed a Ph.D. in educational mathematics at the University of Northern Colorado in 1996.

Career Soto worked at the University of Southern Colorado from 1989 to 1992 as director of the Mathematics Learning Center. In 1995, she became an assistant professor of mathematics at the university, earning tenure there as an associate professor in 2001; the university became known as Colorado State University–Pueblo in 2003. In 2005 she moved to the University of Northern Colorado, taking a step down to become an assistant professor again. She was promoted to associate professor in 2008 and to full professor in 2014, before moving to Colorado State University as a professor of mathematics. At the University of Northern Colorado, Soto founded and directed a summer program for high school girls, Las Chicas de Matemáticas: UNC Math Camp for Young Women, from 2008 to 2014, and returned to rural Nebraska to participate in a teacher education program there, Math in the Middle. She is a fellow of Project NExT, and has been governor of the Rocky Mountain Section of the Mathematical Association of America. She is also a principal investigator of the Embodied Mathematical Imagination & Cognition project. She has a long association with the MAA and has been increasingly involved with its governance. In May 2018, she took over from Gerald Venama as its Associate Secretary. In October 2021, she was elected as President-Elect of MAA and is serving a two year term, starting February 1, 2022.

Recognition In 2001, Chadron State College gave Soto their Distinguished Young Alumni Award. In 2012, the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) gave Soto their Meritorious Service Award. She was the 2016 winner of the Burton W. Jones Distinguished Teaching Award of the Rocky Mountain Section of the MAA, and one of the 2018 winners of the Deborah and Franklin Haimo Awards for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics. She is included in a deck of playing cards featuring notable women mathematicians published by the Association for Women in Mathematics.

References

External links Meet a Mathematician! Video Interview

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Hortensia Soto

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Hortensia Soto claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Hortensia Soto before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Hortensia Soto ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Hortensia Soto

In research: Hortensia Soto appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Hortensia Soto in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Hortensia Soto is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 20th-century American mathematicians, 20th-century American women mathematicians, 21st-century American mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Hortensia Soto outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Hortensia Soto” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Hortensia Soto in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Hortensia Soto means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Hortensia Soto out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Hortensia Soto in simple terms?

Why does Hortensia Soto matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Hortensia Soto?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Hortensia Soto.