mathematics

Katherine Heinrich

Katherine Heinrich 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 Katherine Heinrich rather than just read about it. In short: Katherine A. Heinrich (born 21 February 1954) is a mathematician and mathematics teacher who was the first female president of the Canadian Mathematical Society.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Katherine A. Heinrich (born 21 February 1954) is a mathematician and mathematics teacher who was the first female president of the Canadian Mathematical Society. Her research interests include graph theory and the theory of combinatorial designs. Originally from Australia, she moved to Canada where she worked as a professor at Simon Fraser University and as an academic administrator at the University of Regina.

Education and career Heinrich was born in Murwillumbah, New South Wales. As an undergraduate at the University of Newcastle in Australia, she graduated as a University Medalist in 1976. She continued at Newcastle as a graduate student and completed her doctorate there in 1979. Her dissertation, "Some problems on combinatorial arrays", was supervised by Walter D. Wallis. Heinrich joined the mathematics faculty at Simon Fraser University in 1981, and married another graph theorist there, Brian Alspach. She became a full professor in 1987 and chaired the department from 1991 to 1996. While working at Simon Fraser, she co-ordinated several outreach activities including a conference for pre-teen girls called "Women Do Math" and later "Discover the Possibilities", a shopping-center exhibit called "Math in the Malls", and a series of national conferences on mathematics education. From 1996 to 1998, she was the president of the Canadian Mathematical Society, its first female president. In 1999, she moved to the University of Regina as academic vice president and, in 2003, she was confirmed for a second five-year term as vice president. At Regina, she helped to establish an institute for French-language education and built stronger connections between Regina and the First Nations University of Canada. She retired in 2007 and returned to Newcastle, New South Wales, where she is active in textile arts.

Research MathSciNet lists 73 publications for Heinrich, dated from 1976 to 2012. Several of her research publications concern orthogonal Latin squares,[A] analogous concepts in graph theory[D] and applications of these concepts in parallel computing.[E] She has also published works on finding spanning subgraphs with constraints on the degree of each vertex[C] and on Alspach's conjecture on disjoint cycle covers of complete graphs,[D] among other topics.

Selected publications

Recognition The University of Newcastle gave Heinrich a Gold Medal for Professional Excellence in 1995. In 2005, she won the Adrien Pouliot Award of the Canadian Mathematical Society for her work in mathematics education.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Katherine Heinrich

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Katherine Heinrich 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 Katherine Heinrich 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 Katherine Heinrich 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 Katherine Heinrich

In research: Katherine Heinrich 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 Katherine Heinrich 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: Katherine Heinrich is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1954 births, Academic staff of Simon Fraser University, Academic staff of the University of Regina, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Katherine Heinrich 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 Katherine Heinrich in 20 minutes

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

Frequently asked questions

What is Katherine Heinrich in simple terms?

Katherine A. Heinrich (born 21 February 1954) is a mathematician and mathematics teacher who was the first female president of the Canadian Mathematical Society.

Why does Katherine Heinrich 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 Katherine Heinrich?

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 Katherine Heinrich.