mathematics

Stan Wagon

Stan Wagon 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 Stan Wagon rather than just read about it. In short: Stanley Wagon is a Canadian-American mathematician, a professor emeritus of mathematics at Macalester College in Minnesota. He is the author of multiple books on number theory, geometry, and computational mathematics, and is also known for his snow sculpture.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Stanley Wagon is a Canadian-American mathematician, a professor emeritus of mathematics at Macalester College in Minnesota. He is the author of multiple books on number theory, geometry, and computational mathematics, and is also known for his snow sculpture.

Biography Wagon was born in Montreal, to Sam and Diana (Idlovitch) Wagon. His sister Lila (Wagon) Hope-Simpson died in 2021. Wagon did his undergraduate studies at McGill University in Montreal, graduating in 1971. He earned his Ph.D. in 1975 from Dartmouth College, under the supervision of James Earl Baumgartner. He married mathematician Joan Hutchinson, and the two of them shared a single faculty position at Smith College and again at Macalester, where they moved in 1990.

Books The Banach–Tarski Paradox (Cambridge University Press, 1985) Old and New Unsolved Problems in Plane Geometry and Number Theory (with Victor Klee, Mathematical Association of America, 1991) Mathematica® in Action: Problem Solving Through Visualization and Computation (W.H. Freeman, 1991; 2nd ed., Springer, 1999; 3rd ed., Springer, 2010) Animating Calculus (with E. Packel, TELOS, 1996) Which Way Did the Bicycle Go? (with J. D. E. Konhauser and D. Velleman, Mathematical Association of America, 1996) VisualDSolve: Visualizing Differential Equations with Mathematica (with Dan Schwalbe, TELOS, 1997; 2nd ed., with Schwalbe and Antonin Slavik, Wolfram Research, 2009). A Course in Computational Number Theory (with David Bressoud, Springer, 2000) The Mathematical Explorer (Wolfram Research, Inc., 2001) The SIAM 100-Digit Challenge: A Study in High-Accuracy Numerical Computing (with Laurie, Bornemann, and Waldvogel, SIAM, 2004)

Other activities Wagon is also known for riding a bicycle with square wheels, for his mathematical snow sculptures, and for having given the name to the 420 Arch, a natural stone arch in southern Utah.

Awards and honors Wagon won the Lester R. Ford Award of the Mathematical Association of America for his 1988 paper, "Fourteen Proofs of a Result about Tiling a Rectangle". Wagon and his co-authors Ellen Gethner and Brian Wick won the Chauvenet Prize for mathematical exposition in 2002 for their 1998 paper, "A Stroll through the Gaussian Primes". Wagon and Andrew Beveridge received the 2015 Carl B. Allendoerfer Prize for their paper ″The Sorting Hat Goes to College″.

References

External links Official website

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Stan Wagon

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Stan Wagon 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 Stan Wagon 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 Stan Wagon 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 Stan Wagon

In research: Stan Wagon 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 Stan Wagon 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: Stan Wagon is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 20th-century American mathematicians, 21st-century American mathematicians, Canadian mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Stan Wagon 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 Stan Wagon in 20 minutes

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

Frequently asked questions

What is Stan Wagon in simple terms?

Why does Stan Wagon 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 Stan Wagon?

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 Stan Wagon.