Another Math Circle Veteran Wins the Top Prize in Intel Science Talent Search

Evan O’Dorney, an active participant in the Berkeley Math Circle was the $100,000 winner of this year’s Intel Science Talent Search.  He joins last years’ winner, Amy Chyao, in continuing the connection between math circles and this prestigious contest.

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 15, 2011 – Honoring high school seniors with exceptional promise in math and science, Intel Corporation and Society for Science & the Public (SSP) today announced the winners of America’s most elite and demanding high school research competition, the Intel Science Talent Search.

Evan O’Dorney, 17, of Danville, Calif., won the top award of $100,000 from the Intel Foundation for his mathematical project in which he compared two ways to estimate the square root of an integer. Evan discovered precisely when the faster way would work. As a byproduct of Evan’s research he solved other equations useful for encrypting data. This furthered an interest he developed as early as age 2, when he was checking math textbooks out of the library.

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Zvezdelina Stankova Wins Nation’s Highest Math Teaching Award

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The Mathematical Association of America awarded Dr. Zvezdelina Stankova the Haimo Award for distinguished college teaching of math.  Dr. Stankova spoke to the Metroplex Math Circle last month and she is the founder and director of the excellent, Berkeley Math Circle.

Please take the time to read the article and watch the video above which speak to the positive impact realized by Zvezdelina and math circles in her native Bulgaria and in the US.

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March 27, 2010 – Dr. Zvezdelina Stankova

“Attacking Plane Geometry with Bare Hands or with Mathematical Armor?”

In the classic book of “Alice in Wonderland” many strange things happen that are left unexplained by the mathematician author Lewis Carroll. Similarly, in this math circle session at UT Dallas, reflections will “mystically” become rotations and rotations will turn into translations! Is this possible and mathematically sound?  Come to this talk to find out what happened just a month ago at the Bay Area Math Olympiad and how three different brilliant solutions to the same geometry problem were created by student participants. If you want more preparation on the topic, visit the UT Arlington math circle session “Medians Surrender at the Olympics” on March 25, Thursday, 7-9pm, for another geometry session given by the same speaker.

Dr. Zvezdelina Stankova is a Visiting Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley.  She is also the director of the reknowned Berkeley Math Circle.

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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 games that have winning strategies, and try to recognize the patterns for finding the strategies.   After that we will talk about multi-player games and probabilistic games.

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