Hope's REU students to lead colloquium

In today's colloquium you will learn skills that, hopefully, you will not need.  Two of the past summer's REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) students will present their work.  Kenneth Papes will present "Swindle your Friends using only a Coin."  In this project, he studied probabilities associated with sequences occurring in a string of randomly generated letters.  In particular, he looked at a game in which two or more players choose unique sequences of letters (say H and T for heads and tails) and a bet is made.  He will show that an informed player, in the long run, has an advantage over an uninformed player.  Don't miss your chance to learn how to be an informed player.

Once you are informed on how to swindle your friends, you may need the information given by the second REU student.  Henry Gould will present "Jail Break."  Spurred on by prison-escape movies like "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Great Escape,"  Henry wondered if a mathematician could escape more quickly than an ordinary convict by optimizing his path?  He will explain how to best balance the prisoner's caution with his thirst for freedom.  For example, the escape hole must be far enough from the outside wall to avoid the watchful eyes of the guards.  However, the longer the time spent in the tunnel, the greater that chances are for detection.

Come hear these talks if you are interested in swindles or  prison breaks.  However, even more important than that, come hear the talks if you are interested in doing research during the summer.  Perhaps next summer's topics could have something to do with ethics!  For more information about an REU check out Hope's REU site at http://www.math.hope.edu/reu.html.
 

Math Week (aka Week-O-Math) schedule announced
 

With Math Week just around the corner, the schedule of events has been announced.   Many exciting events are planned including dinner and a movie, trivia contest, problems-puzzles-pizza, book sale, and mathematical poetry contest.  A complete list of events follows.  Mark your calendars for the week of October 28 - November 2.  A few of the events require reservations.  So if you plan to attend one of those events, make sure you r.s.v.p. sooner than later.  In addition to the following schedule of events, a book sale will take place in the Reading Room (VWF 222) and entries for Grand Prize Raffle will be collected all week long.

Five guys that can't wait for Week-O-Math!

Math in the Movies

Besides A Beautiful Mind, there have been a number of recent movies that have included mathematics as a major part of the movie.  There have also been a number of movies, like Big, that included an interesting scene that revolved around mathematics.  There is a nice web site,  http://world.std.com/~reinhold/mathmovies.html, that looks at the way mathematics is portrayed in the movies.  The site gives a rating for both the quality of the film and the quality of the mathematics portrayed in the film.  It is an interesting web site for those interested in both mathematics and movies.
 

There is still time left to sign up for the MATH Challenge

There is still time to be a part of the team, but you need to act quickly.  The 2002 Michigan Autumn Take Home Challenge (or MATH Challenge) is scheduled for  9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 2.  To participate, however, you need to sign up by October 18 with Professor Harrelson.  You may either sign up on her office door or send her an e-mail.  This team oriented math competition for undergraduates consists of ten interesting problems dealing with topics and concepts found in the undergraduate mathematics curriculum.  Each team takes the exam at their home campus under the supervision of a faculty advisor.
 

Two colloquia are slated for next week.

At 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 17, Tom Clark and Gerard Venema from Calvin College will present "Classifying Chains of Six Segments" in 104 VanderWerf.  A polygonal chain is the union of a finite number of straight line segments in R³ that are connected end-to-end.  Two chains are considered to be equivalent if there is an isotopy of R³ that moves one chain to the other while keeping the segments rigid.  Each segment must remain straight during the isotopy and the lengths of the segments may not change, but bending and twisting are allowed at the joints between the segments.  Chains may be knotted and stuck in this category even though all chains are topologically trivial.  Cantarella and Johnston have classified polygonal chains with 5 or fewer segments.  In this talk we will describe and classify all polygonal chains of 6 segments.

We will also be treated to a second colloquium next week.  On Friday, October 18, Al Baartmans from Michigan Tech. will give a talk.  Look for details on this talk soon.
 

Surfing the Web

Did you ever wonder what Sierpinski's Triangle was?  How about the Lemniscate of Bernoulli?  Information about these, including some neat java applets, can be found at the National Curve Bank.  This web site can be found at http://curvebank.calstatela.edu/home/home.htm.  The National Curve Bank gives geometrical, algebraic, and historical aspects of curves through animation and interaction.  It also gives links to other pages about particular curves.