Amy Nicole Langville (born 1975) is an American mathematician and

operations research Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve deci ...

er, and is also a former star basketball player at the high school and college levels. One of the main topics in her research is

ranking A ranking is a relationship between a set of items such that, for any two items, the first is either "ranked higher than", "ranked lower than" or "ranked equal to" the second. In mathematics, this is known as a weak order or total preorder of o ...

systems such as the

PageRank PageRank (PR) is an algorithm used by Google Search to rank web pages in their search engine results. It is named after both the term "web page" and co-founder Larry Page. PageRank is a way of measuring the importance of website pages. According ...

system used by Google for ranking web pages. She has also applied her ranking expertise to basketball

bracketology Bracketology is the process of predicting the field of college basketball participants in the NCAA basketball tournament, named as such because it is commonly used to fill in tournament brackets for the postseason. It incorporates some method of p ...

. She is a professor of mathematics at the

College of Charleston The College of Charleston (CofC or Charleston) is a public university in Charleston, South Carolina. Founded in 1770 and chartered in 1785, it is the oldest university in South Carolina, the 13th oldest institution of higher learning in the Unit ...

Education and career

Langville grew up in

Arnold, Maryland Arnold, a census-designated place (CDP) in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, United States, located just outside of the state's capital, Annapolis. It is located 18.78 miles south of Baltimore, and 29.97 miles east of Washington, D.C. The population w ...

, and was a star basketball player for

Archbishop Spalding High School Archbishop Spalding High School is a private, Catholic co-educational high school located in Severn, Maryland, USA. It is located in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore. Most of its students live in Annapolis, Crownsville, Arnold, Pasad ...

, becoming the top player on the Academic All-Maryland women's basketball team. She also played on the school's volleyball team, was president of the school branch of the National Honor Society, graduated at the top of her class, and was listed by the Maryland Higher Education Commission as a Maryland Distinguished Scholar. After being "recruited by more than 50 colleges", she became an undergraduate at

Mount St. Mary's College Mount Saint Mary's University, Los Angeles (known as Mount St. Mary's College until January 2015) is a private, Catholic university primarily for women, in Los Angeles, California. Women make up ninety percent of the student body. It was found ...

and a player for the

Mount St. Mary's Mountaineers women's basketball The Mount St. Mary's Mountaineers women's basketball represents Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg, Maryland, United States. The school competes in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. They play their home games at Knott Arena Knott ...

team, on a full basketball scholarship; she was

Northeast Conference Women's Basketball Player of the Year The Northeast Conference (NEC) Women's Basketball Player of the Year is an annual college basketball award given to the Northeast Conference's most outstanding player. The award was first given following the 1986–87 season. Winners Winners b ...

for 1995–1996. She earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics at Mount St. Mary's in 1997, as the school valedictorian, and was named to the 1997 GTE academic all-American women's basketball first team. She earned a Ph.D. in operations research at

North Carolina State University North Carolina State University (NC State) is a public land-grant research university in Raleigh, North Carolina. Founded in 1887 and part of the University of North Carolina system, it is the largest university in the Carolinas. The universit ...

in 2002. Her dissertation, ''Preconditioning techniques'', was supervised by William J. Stewart. She remained at North Carolina State University for postdoctoral research, following which she joined the College of Charleston faculty in 2005. She was promoted to full professor in 2015.

Books

Langville is the co-author with Carl D. Meyer of two books on

, both published by the

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial su ...

. The first, ''Google's PageRank and Beyond: The Science of Search Engine Rankings'', concerns

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

s and the

method used by

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

's search engine for ranking web pages in search results; it was published in 2006. The second, ''Who's #1? — The Science of Rating and Ranking'' (published in 2012) extends her study to ranking systems more generally. The Basic Library List Committee of the

Mathematical Association of America The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university, college, and high school teachers; graduate and undergraduate students; pure a ...

has suggested that it be included in undergraduate mathematics libraries.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Langville, Amy 1975 births Living people People from Anne Arundel County, Maryland Basketball players from Maryland 21st-century American mathematicians American women mathematicians Operations researchers Mount St. Mary's Mountaineers women's basketball players North Carolina State University alumni College of Charleston faculty 21st-century American women