Off on a Tangent
A Fortnightly Electronic Newsletter from the Hope College Department of Mathematics
  April 14, 2010 Vol. 8, No. 12 
http://www.math.hope.edu/newsletter.html

Next Week's Colloquium

 
Title:   Do Dogs Know Calculus? Bifurcations at the Beach
Speakers:  Prof. Tim Pennings and Elvis
Time:  Thursday, April 22 at 11:00 a.m.
Place:  VWF 104
We will show  that dogs - at least my dog, Elvis - knows calculus. That is, Elvis can find the optimal - fastest - route to a ball thrown into the water some distance down the beach.  But what happens when Elvis is positioned in the water and retrieves a ball that is also in the water? When should he swim straight to the ball, and when should he swim in to the shore, run along the shore, and then swim back out to the ball? What is the bifurcation point for the change in optimal strategy?  Does Elvis bifurcate?  Does his fur bicate?

 Dr. Elvis (he has an honorary doctorate degree) will be in the building demonstrating that he's indeed the King of Calculus---and much more than a hound dog.

Students inducted into Pi Mu Epsilon


Twelve students were recently inducted into the Michigan Delta chapter of Pi Mu Epsilon.  The purpose of this national mathematics honor society is to promote scholarly activity in mathematics among the students in academic institutions.  Students were invited to join based on their GPA in their mathematics courses as well as their overall gpa.  The induction ceremony was held Tuesday, April 6.  After the short ceremony everyone enjoyed our tradition of eating pie.

 The new members of Pi Mu Epsilon are Grace Olsen, Bobby Nash, Kyle McLellan, Eric Lunderberg, Thao Le, XiSen Hou, Lucas Hoogeveen, Nathan Graber, Maarten Galantowicz, Scott DeClaire, Jessalyn Bolkema, and Emily Bauss.  (Saab Schwiebert, who became a member last year, was also officially inducted.)

The Undergraduate Research Celebration


This year's Celebration of Undergraduate Research & Creative Performance was held last Friday.  Four posters were presented by students who did research in the mathematics department last summer.  
  • Andrea Eddy and Kayla Lankheet  presented "Curricular Innovations in Introductory Statistics."  They, along with faculty mentors Tintle, VanderStoep, and Swanson, worked to develop a new curriculum for Introductory Statistics. 
  • Jessalyn Bolkema and Kiri Sunde presented, "Geometric Spirals from Convex Combinations."  With faculty mentor Cinzori, they developed proofs for a number of properties of geometric spirals.
  • Brooke Quisenberry presented, "How Does Inquiry Based Statistics Curriculum Measure Up?"  She, along with faculty mentor Holmes, examined assessment data from Hope's new Introductory Statistics curriculum and compared the results with results from traditional curriculums.
  • Nathaniel Bowerman, Jennifer James, and Mary Owen presented, "Methods of using posterior probabilities from imputation when testing case-control genetic association."  They compared four different methods of using posterior probabilities in examining the human genome.  They worked with faculty mentors Tintle and Bekmetjev.


Putnam
   

Last December Zach Mitchell and Bobby Nash took the Putnam Exam.  This exam, the most prestigious mathematical competition for undergraduates in the nation, is administered by the Mathematical Association of America. Results have come in and Zach's score put him in the top 500 (out of 4036) nationally and top 16 in Michigan.  Bobby's score put him in the top half nationally.  Congratulations to both of them on a job well done.


LMMC


 
   
Three teams (Nathan Graber, Jessalyn Bolkema, Elizabeth Miller), (Eric Hallquist, Bobby Nash, Xisen Hou), and (Matt Eiles, Caitlin Taylor, Sarah Prill) participated in the Lower Michigan Mathematics Competition on Saturday, April 10.  After a last-minute wake-up call to one of the nine participants, the team headed off to GVSU with enthusiasm and a box full of donuts.  The Hope teams successfully resisted the temptation provided by the giant, rubber, exercise balls that were placed just outside of their competition rooms.  The break between lunch and the solution session was filled by a couple of exciting games of Tsuro.  Eric Hallquist presented a solution to one of the competition problems (find the value of the sum shown on the left) to the rest of the competitors during the solution session after lunch. 



Math Club News


 
Good news from math club this week - the t-shirts are in!  You may pick up your t-shirts on Thursday April 15th in the reading room, at a time that will be later sent to you via email if you ordered a shirt.  

Our last meeting of the semester is next week, so if you are interested in an executive position, please make sure you are in attendance. The meeting will be in VZN 298 on Thursday, April 22 at 7pm.  Hope to see you there!



Problem Solvers of the Fortnight


In our last problem of the fortnight we gave you the problem where your sock drawer has 25 electric yellow socks, 30 blue striped socks, 17 orange socks, 13 magnetic socks, 33 pale purple socks, 30 royal red socks, 11 gruesome green socks, 14 midnight black socks, and 23 bruin brown socks!  If you reach into the drawer in the dark, how many socks do you need to pull out to be sure you have a matching pair?

Congratulations to the following students who correctly solved the problem: Adam Morehouse, Stew Harlow, Steve Higgins, Eric Lauzan, Dani Poll, Joshua Borycz, Kyle Gibson, Leah LaBarge, Eric Hallquist, Kyle Alexander, Kyle Smith, Sarah Canche, Jessica Frey, Tommy Waalkes, Allie Cerone, Ben Fineout, Tim Nagi, Lute Olson, Micheal Ferguson, Morgan Smith, Ronald Radcliffe, Zach Anderson, Josh Grabijas, Carmen Hirsch, Nolan Wiersma, Brian Ward, Shannon Alger, Christian Calyore, Jake Green, Emily Scott, Jennifer Matson, Nick Hazekamp, Zach Mitchell, XiSen Hou, Alex Ketchem, Guillermo Rangel, and Cara Cannon.

Two different solutions that were prepared by Steve Higgins appear below.


Problem of the Fortnight

 
Each U.S. $1 bill contains an 8-digit string between two letters as a serial number.  For example, E12345678A might be such a serial number.  Suppose that the two letters of the serial number are given, say E at the beginning and A at the end.  Under the assumption that every 8-digit string is equally likely to occur between the E and the A, what is the probability that a serial number contains five or more of the same digit?

Write your solution (not just an answer) on the back of a dollar bill and drop it off in the official Problem of the Fortnight slot (or bank deposit box) outside Dr. Pearson's office (VWF 212) by 3:00 p.m. on Friday, April 23.  As always, be sure to include your name, the name(s) of your professor(s), and your math class(es) -- e.g. Buck Washington, Dr. Greenback, Math 299 -- on your solution. 

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Confucius
 
Off on a Tangent