OFF ON A TANGENT
A Fortnightly Electronic Newsletter from the Hope College Department of Mathematics
November 3, 2004 Vol. 3, No. 5

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!

    What:  Ice Cream Social
    When:  Thursday, Nov 4, 3:30 - 4:30 p.m.
    Where:  The Tea Room (VWF 222)

Come join the mathematics faculty and math majors for an ice cream social in the Tea Room (VWF 222) tomorrow, Thursday, November 4 from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. Make yourself an ice cream sundae, register for valuable door prizes, and meet math majors. Find out what math majors look like and why they are majoring in mathematics.  Come and go as you wish.
 

Students attend the recent Michigan Undergraduate Mathematics Conference

A group of 10 students and 2 faculty members from Hope College attended the Michigan Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (MUMC) at Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant last Saturday.  The day consisted of nearly 30 talks on mathematical research by undergraduate students from around the state of Michigan, as well as a keynote address on combinatorics by Professor Jennifer Quinn of Occidental College.  Hope students Daniela Banu, Mike Cortez, Mike Nelsen, and Andrew Wells gave talks, as did Andrew Craker of Notre Dame and Erin Wicker of Alma College (both of whom did research in Hope’s Mathematics REU last summer). 

For students interested in the Summer 2005 Hope Mathematics REU, application information will be available in December.


Next week's colloquium will feature a Calvin professor

Mark Hanisch will give next week's colloquium which is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, November 11 in VWF 104.  Although we don't have an abstract or a title for his talk just yet, we are sure it will be interesting and informative.  Tea time will also return next week before the colloquium at 3:00 p.m. in VWF 222.


Tutors in mathematics needed for nearby school

Rhonda Pardue, a mathematics teacher at Black River School (and Hope graduate), is looking for tutors for some of her students.  She has both paid and unpaid positions that may be available. 

The paid positions are for private tutoring.  She has had some parents ask about private tutors, so is looking for some willing and eager college students to pass on to them.

The unpaid positions are for tutoring and helping out at the school.  If you want some teaching experience or would like to do some community service this is a nice opportunity.  The school could use your help from 1:30-4:00 p.m. on both Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Black River Public School is located just of few blocks from Hope's campus on Columbia Avenue.  For more information about either of these tutoring opportunities, contact Rhonda Pardue at parduer@blackriver.spfs.k12.mi.us.


Problem Solvers of the Fortnight

Congratulations to Bill Buckman, Michael Cortez, James Daly, Pat Mears (who sent his solution to us from Spain), Joshua Morse, Zak Rohde, and Andrew Wells, all of whom correctly surmised that the Hope student had measured a tangent to the inner circle to compute the area of the carousel deck to be 225 pi square feet.  Problem solvers are invited to drop by Dr. Pearson's office to claim their tasty rewards.  We've hidden your prize, Pat, on the carousel in the Pacaba Hosteleria y Servicios waterpark in Madrid.




Problem of the Fortnight

For an ellipse with major axis twice as long as the minor axis, what is the ratio of the area of the ellipse to the area of the largest inscribed rectangle?

Write your solution on the back of a discarded campaign sign and drop it in the Problem of the Fortnight slot outside Dr. Pearson's office (VWF 212) by 3:00 p.m. on Friday, November 12.


Mathography: James Garfield (1831 - 1881)

With election season drawing to a close, we spotlight some presidential politicians who did mathematics avocationally since their jobs would hardly allow otherwise.  In 1876 James Garfield, who at the time was a United States Congressman but later would become the twentieth president of the United States, developed a novel proof of the Pythagorean Theorem based on a trapezoid, shown in the picture at right.
 
Garfield, who studied to be a math teacher before entering politics, first presented his proof to members of Congress while they were enjoying "some mathematical amusements" one day and later published the proof in the New England Journal of Education.  He quipped, "[W]e think it something on which the members of both houses can unite without distinction of party."

Other United States Presidents have also had strong interests in mathematics.  George Washington was a skilled surveyor who viewed mathematics as a sublime endeavor to train the mind in reasoning, and Abraham Lincoln used mathematics to that very purpose when he used Euclid's "Elements" to study sound, logical argument in preparing himself to become a lawyer.  Ulysses S. Grant showed such mathematical promise while he was a cadet at West Point that for a while he hoped to become a mathematics professor at the Academy.  But, as Grant said, "Circumstances always did shape my course different from my plans."

To read more about Garfield's proof of the Pythagorean Theorem, please see http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/garfield.htm, and for more information about these former presidents, visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/. 



Got a Math Question?

Ask Elvis ...

... email him at elvis@hope.edu

Dear Elvis:

Have you ever met up with Harry (Mrs. Shumaker's seeing eye dog) or Fletcher (a similarly trained dog for a student)?

Trevor Colburn


Dear Trevor,

I have never met Harry.  Whenever I have seen him, he is busy helping Mrs. Shumaker across campus, so I keep my distance so as not to distract him.  But I have met and played with Fletcher several times.  Last winter we played fetch in the snow, and with his long legs he SCHOOLED me!  However, even though he was faster at getting the ball, I go after it with more dignity.  Watch us sometime.  He jumps around like a goofball, whereas I maintain the appropriate character suitable for my English heritage.


   Elvis

P.S. Another famous dog around campus is Cubby, Prof. Heather Sellers DeZwaan's dog.  While I've met him, we haven't had time to play fetch together yet.  Cubby has a leading role in the new book Spike and Cubby's Ice Cream Island Adventure.  You can check it out at http://www.heathersellers.com/.  Not to let Cubby out do me, my picture recently appeared on the cover of a statistics journal.  You can see that at http://www.math.hope.edu/newsletter/2004-05/statmag.jpg.


Question:  What does the photo to the left show?

a) How students in Northern Michigan graphed functions before they had graphing calculators.
b) What math teachers do to turn a great big pile of boring sand into something that is actually fun.
c)  A marching band lining up to play Function Junction.
d)  The Power family reunion picture.
e) The line of people still waiting to vote in Ohio.







I had always thought that once you grew up you could do anything you wanted -- stay up all night or eat ice cream straight out of the container.
~ Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America (1989).