Jane Butterfield

Jane Butterfield
Position
Associate Teaching Professor; Assistance Centre Manager
Mathematics and Statistics
Credentials

PhD University of Illinois

Contact
Office: DTB-A445
website

My research interests include both math education and graph theory. In the area of graph theory, I am most interested in pursuit games, random graphs, graph Ramsey theory, and extremal graph theory. In the area of math education I am most interested in alternative methods of assessing student learning, particularly as a means of improving access to and equality of education.

Interests

  • Math education
  • Graph theory

Courses

Current Projects

Line-of-Sight Pursuit in Strictly Sweepable Polygons

We study a turn-based game in a simply connected polygonal environment between a pursuer and an evader, in which each player can only see the other when the line segment connecting them is contained in the polygon. This work started in the summer of 2011 as part of the IMA and Macalester REU program MAXIMA, for which I was a postdoc advisor to a team of talented students working under the supervision of Andrew Beveridge. The resulting paper has been submitted for publication.

Selected Publications

  • J. Butterfield, H. Keynes, J. Rogness, J. Sukiennik, Analyzing the Gender Gap on an Entrance Exam for Mathematically Talented Students, Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations.
  • J. Balogh, J. Butterfield, P. Hu, J. Lenz, Mantel's Theorem for Random Hypergraphs, to appear in Random Structures and Algorithms.
  • J. Balogh, Jane Butterfield, Ping Hu, John Lenz and Dhruv Mubayi, On the Chromatic Thresholds of Hypergraphs, to appear in Combinatorics, Probability, and Computing.
  • J. Balogh and J. Butterfield Online Ramsey games for triangles in random graphs, Discrete Mathematics Volume 310, Issue 24, (2010) pp. 3653-3657.
  • J. Balogh and J. Butterfield, Excluding induced subgraphs: Critical graphs. Random Structures and Algorithms, 38 (2011) pp.100-120.
  • J. Butterfield, D. Cranston, G. Puleo, D. West, R. Zamani, Revolutionaries and Spies: Spy-good and spy-bad graphs, Theoretical Computer Science, 463 (2012) pp.35-53.
  • J. Butterfield, T. Grauman, B. Kinnersley, K. Milans, and C. Stocker, D. West On-line Ramsey Theory for bounded degree graphs, Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, 18 (2011), Paper P136, 22 pages.