This fall I woke up to a surprise comprehensive exam, with my toddler as the examiner, starting with the demand for a nonconvex regular [simple] polygon. It was 4:30 am. I had not yet had coffee. Everything I Need to Know About Polygons I Learned from My Pre-Kindergartner Courtney GibbonsRead More →
The next time it's pouring rain and you're clinging to that umbrella like it's your most prized possession, take the opportunity to look up and see the beauty of the mathematics above you. Grasping the Math That's Over Your Head Jessica Sidman Amherst College Audrey St. John Mount Holyoke CollegeRead More →
We’ve seen that semialgebraic Teddy and semialgebraic Lambkin are both images of a four-dimensional ball. Could they be images of each other? The Teddy-Lambkin Theorem Ursula Whitcher Mathematical Reviews (AMS) My given name means bear—it’s the same root as the constellation Ursa Major—so growing up I had a huge collectionRead More →
Either math makes no sense at all, or integration by substitution is much deeper and more profound than we've given it credit for. I hope to convince you of the latter… Elliptic Functions, Doughnuts, and a Secret Integration Technique Anil Venkatesh Adelphi University Introduction Let's start with some pictures. What'sRead More →
Willa is an economist and Cara is a mathematician, so together they have decided to turn the problem of which game to play into a separate meta-game. Because they both love numbers, Willa and Cara start by creating matrices... Elliptic curves come to date night Ursula Whitcher Mathematical Reviews (AMS)Read More →
If one has a pattern on a band, frieze, or strip (disregarding color if as often happens more than one color appears), regardless of the artistic content of what one sees, there are exactly 7 different patterns that are possible… Remembering Donald W. Crowe Maker of Connections between Symmetry, ArtRead More →
I would like to discuss the Jordan curve theorem as part of an intrinsic human activity: storytelling. The Jordan Curve Theorem as a Lusona Allechar Serrano López Harvard University Introduction The Jordan curve theorem is a result in topology that states that every Jordan curve (a plane simple closed curve)Read More →