mathematics

Mary Perry Smith

Mary Perry Smith 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 Mary Perry Smith rather than just read about it. In short: Mary Perry Smith (May 29, 1926 – August 10, 2015) was an American mathematics educator who cofounded the Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement program and the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. Early life and education Perry Smith was born on May 29, 1926, and was originally from Evansville, Indiana, one of six children of a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church; her maternal grandfather, Henry Alle…

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Mary Perry Smith (May 29, 1926 – August 10, 2015) was an American mathematics educator who cofounded the Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement program and the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame.

Early life and education Perry Smith was born on May 29, 1926, and was originally from Evansville, Indiana, one of six children of a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church; her maternal grandfather, Henry Allen Perry had been a chaplain and mathematics teacher at the Tuskegee Institute, where her parents met. As a child she moved frequently, to Kokomo, Logansport, Anderson, Crawfordsville, and Frankfort, all in Indiana. She earned a bachelor's degree from Ball State University in mathematics and science in three years, as one of a small number of African-American students there, and continued at Purdue University for a master's degree in counseling and guidance (with minors in biochemistry and statistics), finishing in 1948.

Later life and career Unable to find a job because of the discrimination in teacher hiring in Indiana, she followed her older brother to the newly opened Texas State University for Negroes in Houston, where she taught mathematics for three years. After marrying Norvel L. Smith (later to become the president of Merritt College and the first African American head of a college in California) and moving with her husband to Oakland, California, she joined a doctoral program in educational psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, but moved to part-time study and then stopped out to become a teacher, first in a junior high school in San Francisco from 1953 until 1961, and then at Oakland Technical High School, where she taught geometry for 17 years.

Service In 1969, Perry Smith cofounded the Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) program for under-privileged pre-college students in California. In 1974, she cofounded the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in Oakland, California, initially as part of the Oakland Museum’s Cultural and Ethnics Affairs Guild and, in 1978, as a separate organization; she also served as its president. She left her teaching position to work for the MESA program in 1977, as statewide program director, and also served on the board of the Oakland Museum of California. She died in 2015.

Legacy Her papers are kept in the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley.

References

External links In memoriam: Mary Perry Smith, UCLA Center for Excellence in Engineering and Diversity

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mary Perry Smith

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mary Perry Smith 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 Mary Perry Smith 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 Mary Perry Smith 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 Mary Perry Smith

In research: Mary Perry Smith 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 Mary Perry Smith 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: Mary Perry Smith is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1926 births, 2015 deaths, 20th-century African-American people, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mary Perry Smith 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 Mary Perry Smith in 20 minutes

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

Frequently asked questions

What is Mary Perry Smith in simple terms?

Mary Perry Smith (May 29, 1926 – August 10, 2015) was an American mathematics educator who cofounded the Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement program and the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. Early life and education Perry Smith was born on May 29, 1926, and was originally from Evansville, In…

Why does Mary Perry Smith 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 Mary Perry Smith?

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 Mary Perry Smith.