Meetings for Fall 2019
Talks start at 6pm in room 3255 of Helen C. White Library, unless otherwise noted.
| Fall 2019
|
| Date |
Speaker |
Topic
|
| September 23, 2019 |
Soumya Sankar |
Why don't map makers like high heels?
|
| September 30, 2019 |
Erika Pirnes |
Why do ice hockey players fall in love with mathematicians?
|
| October 7, 2019 |
Uri Andrews |
Self-reference, proofs, and computer programming
|
| October 14, 2019 |
James Hanson |
When is a puzzle impossible?
|
| October 21, 2019 |
Owen Goff |
Symbolic Logic and How It's Really Just Arithmetic
|
| October 28, 2019 |
Ian Seong |
Counting, but Not Like Kindergarteners
|
| November 4, 2019 |
Omer Mermelstein |
Ciphers: To Gibberish and Back Again
|
| November 11, 2019 |
Colin Crowley |
Many Pennies
|
| November 18, 2019 |
Daniel Corey |
The Königsberg Bridge Problem
|
Meetings for Spring 2020
Talks start at 6pm in room 3255 of Helen C. White Library, unless otherwise noted.
| Spring 2020
|
| Date |
Speaker |
Topic
|
| January 27, 2020 |
Caitlyn Booms |
Magic or Math?
|
| February 3, 2020 |
Erika Pirnes |
Finding Your Roots
|
| February 10, 2020 |
Xiao Shen |
Constructing the 17-gon
|
| February 17, 2020 |
Ben Bruce |
1+1=2 and Other Integer Partitions
|
| February 24, 2020 |
Brandon Boggess |
Pi-ck Up Sticks
|
| March 2, 2020 |
Solly Parenti |
Lazy Math
|
| March 9, 2020 |
Connor Simpson |
Counting Ways to Color Graphs
|
| March 23, 2020 |
Tejasi Bhatnagar |
Canceled
|
| March 30, 2020 |
Yunxuan Li |
Canceled
|
| April 6, 2020 at 4pm |
Daniel Erman |
Virtual: Josephus Problem and Intro to Research Mathematics
|
| April 13, 2020 at 4pm |
Caitlyn Booms |
Virtual: To Infinity and Beyond
|
| April 20, 2020 at 4pm |
Juliette Bruce |
Virtual: Finding the Fastest Slide
|
Off-Site Meetings
We will hold some Math Circle meetings at local high schools on early release days. If you are interesting in having us come to your high school, please contact us!
| Fall 2019
|
| Date |
Location |
Speaker |
Title |
Abstract
|
| October 7, 2019 |
2:45pm East High |
Solly Parenti |
Tangled Up in Two |
Every tangled cord you have ever encountered is secretly a number. Once you learn how to count these cords, cleaning your room will be as easy as 1-2-3.
|
| November 4, 2019 |
2:45pm James Madison Memorial |
Caitlyn Booms |
Sneaky Segments |
We call a line segment drawn between two lattice points in the coordinate plane sneaky if it does not pass through any other lattice points. During this presentation, we will try to understand exactly when this happens, and we'll discuss how to calculate the probability that two randomly chosen lattice points are connected by a sneaky segment.
|
| November 11, 2019 |
2:45pm East High |
Maya Banks |
Tic-Tac-Topology |
Tic-Tac-Toe is a game usually played on a flat piece of paper. In this standard setting, there is winning strategy--that is, if the player who goes first chooses their moves correctly, they will never lose. But we can also play Tic-Tac-Toe on a surface that isn't lying flat in a plane! In this talk, we will explore the game of Tic-Tac-Toe on cylinders, donuts, and even some wilder surfaces. We'll look for optimal strategies, and learn some topology in the process.
|
| December 16, 2019 |
2:45pm James Madison Memorial |
Daniel Erman |
Really Big Numbers |
We will discuss the role that really really, really big numbers play in modern mathematics and in science. This will be a discussion of estimation and an introduction to some of the ways that mathematicians express unfathomably big numbers.
|
| Spring 2020
|
| Date |
Location |
Speaker |
Title |
Abstract
|
| February 17, 2020 |
2:45pm James Madison Memorial |
Maya Banks |
Tic-Tac-Topology |
Tic-Tac-Toe is a game usually played on a flat piece of paper. In this standard setting, there is winning strategy--that is, if the player who goes first chooses their moves correctly, they will never lose. But we can also play Tic-Tac-Toe on a surface that isn't lying flat in a plane! In this talk, we will explore the game of Tic-Tac-Toe on cylinders, donuts, and even some wilder surfaces. We'll look for optimal strategies, and learn some topology in the process.
|
| March 9, 2020 |
2:45pm East High |
Michel Alexis |
Kakeya Needle Sets |
Take a 1-inch needle. A shape in the plane (i.e. a shape you can draw on a piece of paper) is called Kakeya if we can place the needle within the shape, and by only rotating and shifting the needle within the shape (no lifting!) we can get the needle to point in all directions. We will think about what sort of shapes are and aren't Kakeya, how this affects their geometry, and how small these shapes can be.
|
| April 13, 2020 |
2:45pm James Madison Memorial |
Juliette Bruce |
Canceled |
TBD
|
| April 20, 2020 |
2:45pm East High |
Omer Mermelstein |
Canceled |
TBD
|