Mathematics Professor Julian Fleron, Ph.D., and alumnus Nicholas Taliceo ’16 recently had a paper titled “A Prime Example of the Strong Law of Small Numbers,” accepted for publication in Mathematics Magazine.
The peer-reviewed journal has been an international publication of the Mathematical Association of America, one of the largest societies of mathematicians, since 1947.
The two authors worked together and based the article off part of Taliceo’s senior honors thesis, titled Intercardinal Adjacencies: A New Landscape Metric. Professor Fleron was the faculty advisor for the project.
“I did this work in the context of being a teacher and a mathematician,” he said. “Much of my career has focused on helping people find healthier perceptions of mathematics.”
A resident of Agawam, Taliceo graduated from Westfield State in 2016 with a bachelor of arts degree in mathematics and the distinction of Commonwealth Honors Scholar, the highest academic distinction awarded by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He earned a master’s degree in geospatial information sciences from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2018.
“This project, along with the first mathematics course I was enrolled in at Westfield State, inspired me to become a mathematics major,” said Taliceo, “and so began my lifelong passion and curiosity for mathematics.”
Professor Fleron and Taliceo continue their effort to expand on ideas from Taliceo’s senior honors thesis, to follow-up on elements that remain to be studied.
“We have been working on this problem for about seven years now,” said Professor Fleron. “I’ve enjoyed it immensely—and it’s a prime example of why I do what I do.”
“I feel very fortunate to be part of this long-term project,” said Taliceo, “which reflects the great student/faculty collaboration and dedication to education at Westfield State.”