September 27, 2014 – Dr. Imre Leader – “Van Der Waerden’s Theorem”

Please join us for another exciting math circle where we are pleased to welcome Dr. Imre Leader.  Dr. Leader is a professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, an IMO medalist, and a 10 times national champion of Othello!

He will give a presentation this Saturday on Van Der Waerden’s Theorem which “is a theorem in the branch of mathematics called Ramsey theory. Van der Waerden’s theorem states that for any given positive integers r and k, there is some number N such that if the integers {1, 2, …, N} are colored, each with one of r different colors, then there are at least k integers in arithmetic progression all of the same color. The least such N is the Van der Waerden number W(r, k). It is named after the Dutch mathematician B. L. van der Waerden.^[1]”

Here is a question to get you thinking, “Suppose that we are given a long string of beads. The beads come in two colors, red or blue, but there may be no `pattern’ to the sequence of colors. Can we guarantee to find three equally-spaced beads of the same color? For example, if the 4th, 6th and 8th beads were blue then this would count.”

This topic will be accessible for even young students as long as they understand power notation, e.g. 3^10.

REMINDER:  We are meeting in room 2.312 of the ECSS building

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September 20, 2014 – Dr. Branislav Kisačanin – “Numbers, Sequences, Connections”

(Image credit: Wikipedia)

Come join us in learning about  number sequences! We will start with a story about Leonardo Pisano, better known as Fibonacci, his often forgotten fundamental contributions to mathematics (do you know what they are?), and his ubiquitous sequence of Fibonacci numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, …

We will also learn about other important sequences, such as perfect numbers, Mersenne primes, Fermat primes, and see how they are often related to each other in sometimes unexpected ways. They even make surprising appearances in other mathematical disciplines, for example Fermat primes play a key role in what Gauss discovered about construction of regular polygons.

If this sounds interesting, then this lecture is for you, regardless of your grade level. Parents are welcome too and everybody can ask questions! In our audience we mostly see students from grades 6-12, but it is not rare to see much younger aspiring mathematicians and scientists, including future winners of ISEF and other major competitions!

To hear about all that and much more, come join us at this free, no-registration-needed, event at UTD, on Saturday, Sept. 20, 2014, 2-4 PM, in the ECSS building, room 2.312 (note, this is a different room) For more information about how to find us, please see: https://metroplexmathcircle.wordpress.com/about/directions-and-times/

Our speaker, Dr. Branislav Kisačanin, is a frequent speaker at the Metroplex Math Circle and a faculty member at the AwesomeMath Summer Camps and at the new AwesomeMath Academy. He is also involved in science fair competitions at all levels, school to ISEF. He is a practicing computer scientist with great interest in teaching and writing about math, physics, and computer science.

 

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September 13, 2014 – Naoki Sato – “Game Theory”

Please join us for this kick off event for Math Circle!  Naoki Sato will give an enlightening talk about Game Theory as described below:

 

When playing a two-player game, what is the best move? What is the best overall strategy? And is there a way to determine who can win? In this talk, we will be exploring the basics of combinatorial game theory, starting with simple two-player games, such as Nim. Along the way, we will see how we can determine winning positions, and we will give techniques for analyzing other types of games.

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