Mid-Cities Math Circle

There are few things more gratifying than seeing a new Math Circle take root.  This time it is particularly exciting to see a new Math Circle in the metroplex.  The Mid-Cities Math Circle should be a great resource for students from the western end of the metroplex or anyone looking for more challenging and inspiring [...]

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Harvard’s Math 152

I’ve enjoyed reading the Math 152 Weblog associated with the Discrete Mathematics course of the same name at Harvard.  Many of the posts should be of interest to Metroplex Math Circle attendees, but two recent posts struck me as being very similar to topics from our Fall 2008 lectures. Math 152 helps you get jobs… [...]

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Minimal Surfaces and Regular Polyhedron – Recap

Alicia Prieto Langarica continued her tradition of actively engaging the students as they explored deep mathematical concepts. Ms. Langarica began with a discussion of the regular polyhedron and allowed the students to prove for themselves why there can be no more than 5. She then talked about these 5 Platonic Solids and gave some of [...]

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Minimal Surfaces and Regular Polyhedra

October 11, we will begin with an introduction to polyhedrons and their properties. We will see why there is only a certain number of regular polyhedrons and we will talk about non regular polyherons as well. We will build our own polyhedrons, regular and non regular. Then we will introduce the concept of minimal surfaces [...]

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Alicia Prieto Langarica “Cryptography” Recap

Alicia Prieto LAngarica began her talking by taking questions from the audience about her own experience in competitive mathematics and pursuing a Ph.D. in math. Being closer in age to the students than to the parents, she was much better able to connect with them and discuss some of the pressures that work against pursuing [...]

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Alicia Prieto Langarica Today!

Please join us today for a lecture by Alicia Prieto Langarica.  She will build upon some of the ideas introduced by Dr. Harris last week on “Computer Data Encryption – Decrypted.” However, it is not necessary to have attended the September 27th session to learn a great deal from this presentation.  We will meet at [...]

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Alicia Prieto Langarica – “Cryptography”

October 4th, we will review the history of cryptography starting with the classic methods, medieval techniques, cryptographic mechanical machines and finishing with contemporary cryptographic methods. We will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each method and we will try to come up with different cryptographic methods of our own. Ms. Langarica is a mathematics Phd [...]

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