Mathematics Major Presented Research to Legislators at State Capitol
Posted on Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Westminster College senior mathematics major Kaitlyn McConville presented her research at the Undergraduate Research at the Capitol event held March 23 in Harrisburg.
McConville's presentation, "Nineteenth-Century Pennsylvania National Guardsmen as a Test Case: Analyzing a Deficient Height Sample," described her work analyzing the statistical characteristics of a sample of heights of Pennsylvania National Guardsmen who enlisted in the late1800s and early 1900s.
Human height has been used by economic historians as a proxy to measure economic well-being. Historical measures of height, especially those found in military records, present problems of accuracy and truncation due to rounding and minimum height requirements. McConville's project explored statistical and mathematical corrections to this empirical distribution, attempting to identify methods of addressing the problems inherent in truncated distributions.
McConville's senior capstone research was conducted under the supervision of Dr. Carolyn Cuff, professor and chair of Westminster's Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. The basis for the research was started in 1998 by Dr. Timothy Cuff, Westminster associate professor of history and First-Year Program coordinator, who also attended the Harrisburg event.
Cuff and McConville met with State Senators Jane Orie (R-40th District) and Robert Robbins (R-50th District) and State Representative Mike Turzai (R-28th District).
McConville is a daughter of Keith McConville of Wexford and a graduate of North Allegheny High School.
The Harrisburg poster conference showcased award-winning research projects by undergraduate students from Pennsylvania. The event provided an opportunity to bring together college students and faculty with state legislators and staff to share the experiences of students engaged in research or scholarship at their colleges and universities.
The goals of the event were two-fold: to demonstrate that undergraduate research is important to the educational development of college students, and to show that undergraduate students can produce important and valuable research results that enrich the knowledge, cultural heritage, and economic well-being of our communities, our state, and our nation.
Twenty-five colleges and universities from across the state participated in the event sponsored by House Speaker Keith McCall (D-Carbon), the Legislative Office for Research Liaison, the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, and the Pennsylvania Association of Colleges and Universities.
Contact Dr. Timothy Cuff at (724) 946-6152 or e-mail cufft@westminster.edu for more information.
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