mathematics

Jacqueline Dewar

Jacqueline Dewar 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 Jacqueline Dewar rather than just read about it. In short: Jacqueline M. Dewar (née Deveny) is an American mathematician and mathematics educator known for her distinguished teaching and her mentorship of women in mathematics.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Jacqueline M. Dewar (née Deveny) is an American mathematician and mathematics educator known for her distinguished teaching and her mentorship of women in mathematics. She is a professor emerita of mathematics at Loyola Marymount University.

Education and career Dewar graduated summa cum laude in 1968 from Saint Louis University, and earned her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 1973. Her dissertation, Coincidence Theorems for Set Valued Mappings, was supervised by James Dugundji. She was on the faculty of Loyola Marymount from 1973 until her retirement in 2013, and chaired the mathematics department there from 1983 to 1986 and again from 2005 to 2006.

Books Dewar is the co-author with Dennis G. Zill of a series of mathematics textbooks on algebra, trigonometry, precalculus, and calculus. With C. Bennett and M. Fisher, she is also the author of The scholarship of teaching and learning: A guide for scientists, engineers, and mathematicians (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Recognition In 2006, the Mathematical Association of America gave Dewar the Deborah and Franklin Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics. The award citation credited her for shaping several mathematics degree programs at Loyola Marymount, for her in-service work with school teachers, for her work running mathematics conferences for secondary school girls, and for "her passionate devotion to the art of teaching". In 2018, Dewar was awarded a Service Award by the Association for Women in Mathematics. This award "recognizes individuals for helping to promote and support women in mathematics through exceptional volunteer service to the AWM." In 2019 she won the Louise Hay Award. Dewar was selected to be part of the 2019 class of fellows of the Association for Women in Mathematics "for her work to encourage females to study and be successful in mathematics; for her commitment to educating pre-service teachers, with particular attention to gender equity; for her outreach to liberal arts students to change attitudes about mathematics and women in mathematics; and for her exemplary teaching and mentoring".

In the media Dewar appears with Jim Carrey and others in the documentary film The Number 23 Enigma (2007), explaining mathematics related to the horror film The Number 23.

References

External links Home page

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Jacqueline Dewar

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Jacqueline Dewar 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 Jacqueline Dewar 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 Jacqueline Dewar 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 Jacqueline Dewar

In research: Jacqueline Dewar 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 Jacqueline Dewar 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: Jacqueline Dewar 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 Jacqueline Dewar 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.

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How to study Jacqueline Dewar in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Jacqueline Dewar 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 Jacqueline Dewar out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Jacqueline Dewar in simple terms?

Jacqueline M. Dewar (née Deveny) is an American mathematician and mathematics educator known for her distinguished teaching and her mentorship of women in mathematics.

Why does Jacqueline Dewar 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 Jacqueline Dewar?

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 Jacqueline Dewar.