Reflections Magazine Issue #78 - Spring 2013 | Page 18

Feature Article

By Doug Goodnough

Licking
A

Problem

Senior Project Has a Sweet
Conclusion for Cory Heid ’13

S

omething just didn’t add up for Cory Heid.
Heid, one of a dozen or so math students, faculty and graduates
from Siena Heights University who attended the largest math meeting in the world in San Diego, Calif., was originally scheduled to do a
poster presentation at the January event.
However, upon arrival at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, Heid
learned the expectations had multiplied.
“He can’t find himself in the poster session,” said SHU math professor Andrew-David Bjork, who helped organize the trip. “So (Heid)
looks at the page where his name is, and they gave him a talk. So in
four days he had to prepare a Powerpoint presentation on his senior
project to give a talk to a live audience.”
A live presentation involves much more preparation than a poster
presentation. However, Heid, who completed his coursework in December, first had a problem to solve: the research on his senior project was not complete.

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Reflections Spring ’13

“It was done, but it wasn’t 100 percent completely done,” Heid said.
“I was doing last minute fine-tuning.”
And the topic of his senior project certainly could be called unique.
“It’s ‘How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center
of a Tootsie Pop?’” Heid said. “Just like the 70s (television) commercial.”
He had the data, but not the proper tool to organize it. So Heid
and the math faculty enlisted the help of a representative from the
statistics software company Minitab, who was exhibiting at the conference. The rep agreed to let Heid use the Minitab software to “crunch
it out,” Bjork said.
“I maybe finished it five minutes before I was supposed to do it,”
Heid said of the last-minute preparations before presenting.
“He just nailed it,” Bjork said of Heid’s presentation. “He did a great
job. That was just exciting to us, because none of us saw this coming,
and out of nowhere this opportunity knocks. … He was put on the
spot, and he delivered.”
Heid’s presentation was a highlight of the conference, which
Bjork said was an overall great experience for the SHU contingent.
“We get a lot of technology ideas,” said Bjork of the conference,
which had more than 3,000 talks and 7,000 peop H][