Chair, Natural Sciences and Mathematics Department
Associate Professor of Mathematics
Phone: (361) 570-4206
Ricardo Teixeira began teaching at the University of Houston – Victoria (UHV) in the fall of 2010, when the university received the first class of freshman and sophomore students. He helped implemented the lower-division math courses and first-year seminar. Since then, Dr. Teixeira has been teaching lower-division, upper-division and graduate courses at UHV.
Ricardo Teixeira and Edward Odell, On S1-Strictly Singular Operators, Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society. 143 (2015), pages 4745-4757.
Ricardo Teixeira et al., New Mathway Project: Statistical Reasoning, University of Texas at Austin – Dana Center, 2015.
Ricardo Teixeira, Magical Data Restoration, New Horizons, Mathematical Association of America, 2016.
Ricardo Teixeira et al., New Mathway Project: Reasoning with Functions II, University of Texas at Austin – Dana Center, 2017.
Ricardo Teixeira, Explaining Magic Tricks Through Numeral Systems – Part 1, Symmetry Plus, Mathematical Association, 2017.
Ricardo Teixeira, Explaining Magic Tricks Through Numeral Systems – Part 2, Symmetry Plus, Mathematical Association, (to appear) 2017.
Ricardo Teixeira, Probability and Magic, Plus Magazine, 2017.
Ricardo Teixeira and Jang-Woo Park, Mathematical Explanation and Generalization of Penn and Teller’s Love Ritual Magic Trick, Journal of Magic Research, 2017.
Dr. Teixeira has interests in both pure and applied Mathematics, as well as in Mathematics Education. In pure Mathematics, his main work is in the Functional Analysis field. He received his PhD from The University of Texas at Austin, advised by Dr. Edward Odell, in the spring of 2010. Dr. Teixeira solved the problem of whether the set of S_α-Singular operators form an ideal. Currently, he studies structure of infinite-dimensional Banach Spaces.
In applied Mathematics, Dr. Teixeira has worked in developing tools to predict the results of future events. His tool can be successfully applied to predicting the outcome of sports events. Under this research line, Dr. Teixeira has advised two graduate students in projects. As future projects, he is trying to expand the use of predictions to marketing and other applications.
Dr. Teixeira has also been actively working in developing rigorous mathematical explanation for magic tricks and other recreational activities. So far, he has published and worked in relating topics such as Probability, Theory of Cyclic Groups, Linear Algebra, Coding Theory, Algorithms for Data Transmission, and more, with magic tricks. To this date, over 2,000 students have witnessed Dr. Teixeira perform and explain his “mathemagics” tricks.
In Mathematics Education, Dr. Teixeira has contributed to researches regarding how college students may mature quantitative reasoning abilities. He has also worked with Dana Center in developing textbooks for an innovative approach to developmental/freshman level mathematics. The project is called New Mathways Project, already implemented in most Community Colleges in Texas and in several other institutions across the US, uses the most modern ideas (learning episodes, inquiry-based techniques, real-data problems, etc.) to present mathematics in an interesting and engaging way.
Dr. Teixeira’s role as Director of Core Curriculum has exposed him to great amount of student data. Together with other UHV faculty members and librarians, he mathematically analyzes the results to draw conclusions regarding best practices. This work forms a line of research with great potential to help shape future alternatives for developmental mathematics.
Dr. Teixeira also supports education through different lines. He is the faculty advisor of an honor society (UHV’s Gamma Beta Phi), the founder of a science club for elementary school students, the director of the Mathematics Program at UHV, the director of the Core Curriculum at UHV, the organizer of the annual Math and Robotics Awareness Day (event that has brought over 1,000 high school students to campus for activities and competitions), a member in the Living and Learning Communities, a member of the STEAM panel at Children’s Discovery Museum, a member of the Site-Based Decision Team for a local elementary school, and member of several other committees in Victoria.