Dr. Jonathan Kane will guide students through important theorems from “the results about angles in circles” to the “theory of inversion.” He will then derive parametric equations for hypocycloids and similar curves. Finally, the students will tackle many circle related problems which can be solved using these theorems.
In these papers, Dr. Kane and his co-authors challenge the idea of a biological explanation for the difference in mathematical achievement by young men and women. Instead they describe the many ways that cultural forces create a significant challenge to US students and particularly young women who would otherwise excel at mathematics and problem solving. Certainly the outstanding performance of Lisa Sauermann at the International Mathematical Olympiad demonstrates this great potential.
Congratulations to the many students in Texas who took the 2011 AMC 8. We would like to especially recognize those Texas students in sixth grade or below who scored above a 23 on this challenging 25 point test. Many of these students are regular attendees of the Metroplex Math Circle:
If you were not among the fortunate students who heard Dr. Ivor Page give his December 10 talk on “Thinking as Exercise” here is a video that illustrates one of the many fascinating problems discussed.
In this talk we will solve problems from multiple areas of mathematics and computer science. We will discuss Euler circuits and paths and their use in designing postman routes, finding Steiner points with soap bubbles, counting cannon balls in stacks, continued fractions, the ubiquity of Fibonacci numbers in Computer Science and nature, problems that are intractable for computers, and more.
Sequences of numbers are often defined using a recursive relation and initial conditions, for example, the sequence of Fibonacci numbers is defined with F_{n+2} = F_{n+1} + F_{n} and initial conditions F_{1} = 1, F_{2} = 1. In this lecture we will see (a) how to solve various types of recursions (b)How to determine various sequence properties of number sequences directly from the recursions, and (c) how this knowledge can come in handy in many competition problems as well as in the study of computer science.
Registration is now open for the 2012 North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO). This is a contest that appeals to many students who enjoy mathematical problem solving competitions. As in past years, Dr. Vincent Ng will offer the contest at UT Dallas and will also provide a prep session before the contest.
Knowledge of specific languages is not being tested, but rather the ability of our students to detect patterns and solve problems. Computational Linguistics and Natural Language processing are two exciting fields whose benefits we experience every day when we interact with Google search or Apple’s Siri.