mathematics

Lida Barrett

Lida Barrett 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 Lida Barrett rather than just read about it. In short: Lida Baker Kittrell Barrett (May 21, 1927 – January 28, 2021) was an American mathematics professor and administrator. She served on many committees and boards and contributed to mathematics, mathematics education, and increasing the participation of members of underrepresented groups in mathematics.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Lida Baker Kittrell Barrett (May 21, 1927 – January 28, 2021) was an American mathematics professor and administrator. She served on many committees and boards and contributed to mathematics, mathematics education, and increasing the participation of members of underrepresented groups in mathematics. She served as president of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) in 1989 and 1990.

Early life and education Lida Baker Kittrell was born on May 21, 1927, in Houston, Texas. She earned her baccalaureate, masters, and doctorate degrees in mathematics from Rice University (1946), the University of Texas at Austin (1949), and the University of Pennsylvania (1954), respectively. Her 1954 doctoral dissertation, Regular Curves and Regular Points of Finite Order, was supervised by John Robert Kline.

Career She taught briefly at the Texas State College for Women in Denton, now Texas Woman's University. Barrett served as a mathematics faculty member at the universities of Utah and Tennessee, and headed the mathematics department at the University of Tennessee from 1973 to 1980. During her tenure there, she also worked at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in applied mathematics. She served as an administrator and mathematics faculty member at Northern Illinois University, where she was Associate Provost, and at Mississippi State University (MSU), where she was Dean of Arts and Sciences. After retirement as Dean Emerita from MSU, she was a Senior Associate to the head of the Education Directorate at the National Science Foundation for three years and then served as a Professor of Mathematics at the United States Military Academy at West Point for three years. She died in Knoxville, Tennessee, on January 28, 2021.

Notable positions From 1979 to 1982, Barrett chaired the American Mathematical Society's Committee on Employment and Educational Policy. She served as president of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) in 1989–1990; she was the second woman to serve as president of the MAA . She was on the planning committee for the International Congress in Mathematics Education in Madrid, Spain, in July 1996. She was a member of the advisory committee of the Harvard Calculus Consortium and of the Adolescence and Young Adult/Mathematics Standards committee for the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards.

Recognition In 2008 she received the MAA Yueh-Gin Gung and Dr. Charles Y. Hu Award for Distinguished Service to Mathematics. She was a fellow of the American Mathematical Society and part of the 2019 class of fellows of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM). Her AWM fellow citation read "for her profound and long-lasting effect in diversifying the committees and leadership of the MAA, during and beyond her term as its second woman president; for her value to the mathematics community as a pioneer and defender of women and underrepresented groups".

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Lida Barrett

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Lida Barrett 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 Lida Barrett 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 Lida Barrett 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 Lida Barrett

In research: Lida Barrett 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 Lida Barrett 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: Lida Barrett is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1927 births, 2021 deaths, 20th-century American academics, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Lida Barrett 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 Lida Barrett in 20 minutes

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

Frequently asked questions

What is Lida Barrett in simple terms?

Why does Lida Barrett 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 Lida Barrett?

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 Lida Barrett.