mathematics

Patti Frazer Lock

Patti Frazer Lock 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 Patti Frazer Lock rather than just read about it. In short: Patricia Frazer Lock (born 1953) is an American mathematician, mathematics educator, statistician, statistics educator, and textbook author whose research interests include social networks and quantum logic. She is the Cummings Professor of Mathematics at St.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Patricia Frazer Lock (born 1953) is an American mathematician, mathematics educator, statistician, statistics educator, and textbook author whose research interests include social networks and quantum logic. She is the Cummings Professor of Mathematics at St. Lawrence University.

Education and career Lock is the daughter of J. Ronald Frazer, a hockey player and business school professor at Clarkson University. She graduated from Colgate University in 1975, with a bachelor's degree in mathematics, and went on to graduate study at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she earned a master's degree in 1978 and completed her Ph.D. in 1981. Her dissertation, Categories of Manuals, was supervised by David J. Foulis. After working for a term as an instructor at the United States Naval Academy, she joined St. Lawrence University in 1981. She became full professor in 1994 and Cummings Professor in 2002. She has served the Mathematical Association of America as chair of its Special Interest Group on Statistics Education for 2015–2016.

Books With Deborah Hughes Hallett, Andrew M. Gleason, and others, Lock is one of the co-authors of the Harvard Calculus Consortium series of textbooks. She is also a co-author with her husband and three children, all professional mathematicians and statisticians, of a statistics textbook, Statistics: Unlocking the Power of Data.

Recognition In 2016 the Seaway Section of the Mathematical Association of America gave Lock their Clarence Stephens Distinguished Teaching Award. In 2017 Lock won the Dexter C. Whittinghill III Award of the Mathematical Association of America Special Interest Group on Statistics Education for her work on incorporating visualizations of big data into introductory statistics courses.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Patti Frazer Lock

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Patti Frazer Lock 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 Patti Frazer Lock 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 Patti Frazer Lock 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 Patti Frazer Lock

In research: Patti Frazer Lock 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 Patti Frazer Lock 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: Patti Frazer Lock is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1953 births, 20th-century American statisticians, 20th-century American women mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Patti Frazer Lock 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 Patti Frazer Lock in 20 minutes

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

Frequently asked questions

What is Patti Frazer Lock in simple terms?

Why does Patti Frazer Lock 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 Patti Frazer Lock?

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 Patti Frazer Lock.