Nov 14 – Ivan Matic – Combinatorial Games

Ivan Matic, assistant director of the Berkeley Math Circle and a former IMO medalist will teach our students a variety of pricinples related to Combinatorial Games. Winning strategy for a particular game is a procedure that will ensure a victory no matter how the opponent is playing.   We will discuss some of the two player [...]

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Cristopher Maier – Coloring and Combinatorics

Don’t let the title mislead you, coloring isn’t kid’s stuff.  Coloring of graphs is a rich mathematical area of research which young mathematicians will encounter frequently. Mr. Maier is going to talk about coloring arguments and some of their applications to combinatorial problems, especially problems from the theory of plane tilings, but also from knot [...]

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Arthur Benjamin – Discrete Mathematics

A good friend of the Metroplex Math Circle, Dr. Arthur Benjamin, has just released a new lecture course through the Teaching Company titled “Discrete Mathematics.” We have our pre-ordered copy and its seems to have the unique combination of humor and depth that we know from Dr. Benjamin’s excellent “mathemagic” presentations. For any students just [...]

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Alan Davis recap

In his lectures about combinatorics, Mr. Davis touched upon various topics. He gave students problems about counting the ways to rearrange and pick items, using candy as a visual to help the students understand. He also talked about the various strategies used to solve these problems. These strategies included using “bars and stars” to represent [...]

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March 7, 2009 – Alan Davis – “Combinatorics Continued”

Alan Davis will continue his previous talk on Combinatorics with more challenging problems and concepts.  Those who missed his first talk are encouraged to attend promptly for a quick review at 2:00. Mr. Davis will focus on the essence of the inclusion-exclusion principle with some interesting problems. For the curious students who are eager to [...]

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February 21, 2009 – Alan Davis – Combinatorics

We are very fortunate to have Alan Davis talk about combinatorics on February 21, 2009. His talk about combinatorics will include the following topics: Counting permutations and combinations, counting with repetition, binomial coefficients, Pascal’s triangle, Pascal’s identity, Vandermonde’s identity, and the inclusion-exclusion principle. Combinatorics is related to many other areas of mathematics such as algebra, [...]

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Arthur Benjamin Books and Lectures

Our November 19, 2008 Special Presentation will be by Dr. Arthur Benjamin, who in addition to being a sought after speaker is also a successful author.  Many people are familiar with Dr. Benjamin from the course that he authored for the Teaching Company entitled Joy of Mathematics. Following is an excerpt from the course description: [...]

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Problem Solving Books

In addition to being the subject of books like Count Down, the Director of Metroplex Math Circle, Dr. Titu Andreescu is also the author of multiple books on problem solving. These books draw on his many years of experience as the director of AMC, coach of the US International Math Olympiad team and author of [...]

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