mathematics

Joy Morris

Joy Morris 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 Joy Morris rather than just read about it. In short: Joy Morris (born 1970) is a Canadian mathematician whose research involves group theory, graph theory, and the connections between the two through Cayley graphs. She is also interested in mathematics education, is the author of two open-access undergraduate mathematics textbooks, and oversees a program in which university mathematics education students provide a drop-in mathematics tutoring service for parents of mi…

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Joy Morris (born 1970) is a Canadian mathematician whose research involves group theory, graph theory, and the connections between the two through Cayley graphs. She is also interested in mathematics education, is the author of two open-access undergraduate mathematics textbooks, and oversees a program in which university mathematics education students provide a drop-in mathematics tutoring service for parents of middle school students. She is a professor of mathematics at the University of Lethbridge.

Education and career Morris is originally from Toronto, Ontario. Both her parents had doctorates; she was the youngest of their four children, another of whom also earned a Ph.D.. She was educated through various alternative-education and gifted-student programs in the Toronto public school system. She graduated from Trent University in 1992 with a double major in mathematics and English, and with fourth-year honours in mathematics earned in part through a summer research project with Brian Alspach at Simon Fraser University. She entered graduate study directly after graduating, continuing to work with Alspach at Simon Fraser, and completed her doctorate in 2000 with a dissertation on Isomorphisms of Cayley Graphs. Morris joined the Lethbridge faculty in 2000, and was promoted to full professor in 2015. As of 2017 her position as a professor at Lethbridge was for half-time.

Mathematics education In 2017, after learning about the frustrating experiences of her middle-school daughter's friends' parents, Morris founded a drop-in mathematics tutoring center through the University of Lethbridge, in which Lethbridge mathematics education students would tutor middle-school parents on the mathematics their children were learning, and provide educational activities for the parents to do with their children. The program was successful, and has continued in subsequent years.

Other contributions Morris's results in groups, graphs, and the symmetries of groups and graphs include a proof of Toida's conjecture according to which, for certain circulant graphs (the Cayley graphs of finite cyclic groups), every symmetry of the graph comes from a symmetry of the underlying group. According to Toida's conjecture, this equivalence between group and graph symmetries should be valid when all of the members of the generating set of the group used to construct the graph are individually generators of the group. Morris has written two open textbooks in mathematics for the undergraduate students at Lethbridge. They are:

Proofs and Concepts: the fundamentals of abstract mathematics (with Dave Witte Morris, 2013) Combinatorics: an upper-level introductory course in enumeration, graph theory, and design theory (2017)

References

External links Home page Joy Morris publications indexed by Google Scholar

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Joy Morris

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Joy Morris 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 Joy Morris 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 Joy Morris 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 Joy Morris

In research: Joy Morris 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 Joy Morris 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: Joy Morris is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1970 births, Academic staff of the University of Lethbridge, Canadian mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Joy Morris 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 Joy Morris in 20 minutes

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

Frequently asked questions

What is Joy Morris in simple terms?

Why does Joy Morris 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 Joy Morris?

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 Joy Morris.