This Wednesday bring your friends and join us in LGRT 1521D from 6:00-7:00 PM for a math game night. We have Go, Set, and Flux – please bring any other games you would like to play. As usual we will have pizza!
Comic from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
RIP Benoit Mandelbrot
“Benoît B. Mandelbrot, a maverick mathematician who developed the field of fractal geometry and applied it to physics, biology, finance and many other fields, died on Thursday in Cambridge, Mass. He was 85.”
Read More in this New York Times article.
What is so divine about the “Divine Proportion”?
This Wednesday 10/20, Aaron Wolbach will present: What is so divine about the “Divine Proportion”? Come join us for an interesting talk and pizza from 6:00-7:00 PM in LGRT 1634!
Abstract:
After we re-discover the Divine Proportion ? with some elementary geometry, we will discuss it’s long history and it’s relationship to the Pythagorean cult and Judeo-christian mythos. We’ll investigate it’s mathematical properties and describe some places where ? appears in the Arts and Sciences, including music, architecture, biology and – of course – mathematics!.
Careers for Math Majors
Tuesday 10/19, 5:00 in LGRT 1634, Mary Ellen Liseno from Career Services will be hosting a question and answer session to talk to math majors about jobs: summer jobs, long term jobs, how you can look for opportunities yourself, and how career services can help you.
Please come.
Date October 19 at 5:00 pm Good Food.
LGRT 1634
Some Useful links
I’ve added some great math-related links for you guys to peruse:
What’s New: The blog of Terry Tao, one of the youngest mathematicians to receive the Fields Medal (the highest honor in mathematics). See also his excellent career advice section.
Division By Zero: A blog about math, puzzles, teaching, and academic technology.
Gowers’s Weblog: Mathematical Discussions.
Math Blog: the title says it all.
American Mathematical Society, and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics: Here you can find some excellent information for students.
Thinking of graduate school in mathematics?
This week’s talk will feature a presentation by Professor Siman Wong, director of the UMass Amherst graduate program in mathematics on preparing for and applying to graduate school in mathematics. Following the talk there will be a question/answer session with a panel of graduate students. All are welcome! We will also discuss summer opportunities for graduate students in mathematics.
Talk 10/6 on the Projective Plane
This week Anna Kazanova will give a talk on the projective plane. Come learn why even parallel lines intersect!
Abstract:
Following the Renaissance artists, we will define the projective plane. We will discover that every two lines intersect and that all kinds of conics (parabola, hyperbola and ellipse) are really the same – it only depends on how you look at them.