Archived Math Circle Material

Meetings for Fall 2014 and Spring 2015

All talks are at 6pm in Ingraham Hall room 120, unless otherwise noted.

Fall 2014
Date and RSVP links	Speaker	Topic	Link for more info
September 8, 2014	Philip Matchett Wood	Pictures and Puzzles
September 15, 2014	Jen Beichman	Playing with geometric sums
September 22, 2014	DJ Bruce	Is any knot the unknot?
September 29, 2014	Uri Andrews	The games of Criss Cross and Brussels Sprouts
October 6, 2014	David Sondak	Fluids, Math, and Oobleck!
October 13, 2014	George Craciun	Proofs without words (but with plenty of pictures)
October 20, 2014	Scott Hottovy	Coming soon!
October 27, 2014	Daniel Hast	Clock arithmetic and perfect squares: a "Golden Theorem" of reciprocity
November 3, 2014	Alisha Zachariah	Infinity
November 10, 2014	Marko Budisic	Mathematics of epidemics
November 17, 2014	Nigel Boston	Same bad channel
November 24, 2014	Daniel Erman	How to catch a (data) thief Cancelled or weather
December 1, 2014	Daniel Erman	How to catch a (data) thief
Spring 2015
January 26, 2015	TBA	Coming soon!
February 2, 2015	Soledad Benguria	Exploring Palindromes
February 9, 2015	Jeff Linderoth	Coming soon!
February 16, 2015	Simon Marshall	The Ant Walk
February 23, 2015	Uri Andrews	Coming soon!
March 2, 2015	Jordan Ellenberg	Coming soon!
March 9, 2015	Ali Lynch	Mathematical Games and Winning Strategies
March 16, 2015	Daniel Schultheis	Picture Hanging and Secret Algebra
March 23, 2015	Betsy Stovall	Divisibility Cheats
March 30, 2015	No meeting	UW Spring Break
April 6, 2015	Julie Mitchell	Protein Folding and Robot Dances: Understanding the Basics of Kinematic Motion
April 13, 2015	Jessica Lin	Coming soon!
April 20, 2015	DJ Bruce	Coming soon!
April 27, 2015	David Anderson	Let’s make a deal!
May 4, 2015	Daniel Ross	Coming soon!
May 11, 2015	Grace Deane	Last meeting of semester!

Abstracts

Philip Matchett Wood

Pictures and Puzzles

When does a simple picture solve a tricky puzzle? Come and learn about how line-and-dot drawing can solve complex puzzles, and create some new puzzles besides!

DJ Bruce

Is any knot the unknot?

Abstract: You're walking home from school, and you pull out your head phones to listen to some tunes. However, inevitably they are a horribly tangled mess, but are they really a knot? We'll talk about what exactly is a knot, and how we can tell when something is not the unknot.

David Sondak

Fluids, Math and Oobleck!

We will explore the magical world of fluids and their relationship to mathematics. As an example of fluids and math in the real world, we will make the living fluid oobleck and discuss some of its mathematical properties.

George Craciun

Proofs without words (but with plenty of pictures)

We will discuss mathematical proofs that can be done using only pictures or figures. If you want to see many such examples you can check out the book "Proofs without Words: Exercises in Visual Thinking" by Roger B. Nelsen. For more information also look at the wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_without_words , where you can find links to Java Applets that show animations of proofs without words, such as http://usamts.org/Gallery/G_Gallery.php .

Daniel Hast

Clock arithmetic and perfect squares: a "Golden Theorem" of reciprocity

We'll explore systems of arithmetic where numbers loop back around to zero (like the hours on a clock!), called "modular arithmetic". Which numbers are perfect squares in such systems? Gauss, one of the greatest mathematicians in history, called the remarkable answer the "golden theorem".

Alisha Zachariah

What is infinity anyway

Infinity has a long history of having confounded and fascinated thinkers. We will take a look at some fundamental problems that early mathematicians grappled with and see some ways to understand infinity that have contributed to how we do math today.

Marko Budisic

Mathematics of epidemics

Infectious diseases in our communities often make it into daily conversation: "There's a nasty cold going around.", "It's the flu season, get your shots.", and even, "There are news of a zombie outbreak!" Come hear how math gets applied to something as messy as spread of disease. We will use our wits, pencils, and computers to understand the progress of headaches, common cold, zombie outbreaks, and even ebola, a disease that is currently making the news.

Nigel Boston

Same bad channel

How do we get such clear photos of the comet in the news? A 20 watt transmitter sends signals 500 million km through space to us and yet amazingly they survive this ordeal error-free. What's behind this is error-correcting codes. I'll give some of the basics, some related puzzles, and some challenges.

Soledad Benguria

Exploring Palindromes

A Palindrome is a word or a number that reads the same forward and backwards. For example, Hannah, radar and civic are palindromic words, and 34743, 6446 are palindromic numbers. We will explore some curious properties of palindromes, and talk about what makes the number 196 special.

Simon Marshall

The Ant Walk

An ant is walking on a grid in the plane, but it can only move north or east. How many ways are there for it to get from one square to another? The numbers that appear when we answer this question have a wealth of interesting properties.

Betsy Stovall

Divisibility Cheats

We will discuss simple ways to determine whether one number is evenly divisible by a smaller one and also how to prove these facts. If time permits, we will also look at divisibility rules in bases other than 10.

Julie Mitchell

Protein Folding and Robot Dances: Understanding the Basics of Kinematic Motion

We will learn about motion subject to constraints. Mathematics based on these principles helps us build robots, explains human motion, and helps us model the shape of proteins like enzymes and antibodies.

David Anderson

Let’s make a deal!

We will explore a famous problem, called the Monty Hall Problem, that was inspired by a game show and became well known after a number of mathematicians incorrectly solved the problem in a very public manner. We will discuss and solve the problem, learn some probability, play the game, and invent some variants of the game that may, or may not, have similar counter-intuitive behaviors.

Previous Math Circle Meetings for Spring 2014

All talks are at 6pm in Ingraham Hall room 120, unless otherwise noted.

Date and RSVP links	Speaker	Topic	Link for more info
January 27, 2014	Matthew Johnston	Cancelled for weather
February 3, 2014	Daniel Ross	Encryption
February 10, 2014	Betsy Stovall	Geometric addition
February 17, 2014	Mimansa Vahia	Origami and Mathematics	Origami video
February 24, 2014	Jon Kane	Rows of Roses
March 3, 2014	Matthew Johnston	Surprising results in games of chance
March 10, 2014	Jordan Ellenberg	Why the card game Set should actually be called Line, and other comments on finite geometry	Set
March 17, 2014	NO MEETING	UW Spring Break
March 24, 2014	Reese Johnston	The Mathematics of Lying
March 31, 2014	Reese Johnston	The Mathematics of Lying, part 2
April 7, 2014	Daniel Erman	Josephus Problem	Platonic solids
April 14, 2014	NO MEETING	MMSD Spring Break
April 21, 2014	Chris Janjigian	Pirates and prisoners: an introduction to game theory (with candy!)

Abstracts

Betsy Stovall

Geometric Addition

Abstract: We will learn some neat geometric tricks for quickly and painlessly computing some surprisingly large sums.

Jon Kane

Rows of Roses

Abstract: Let’s talk about the sine and cosine functions. One does not need to use very much information about these commonly seen functions in order to understand a large number of curves which can be drawn by graphing sine and cosine in Cartesian and polar coordinates. We will see sine curves, sums of sine curves, Lissajous figures, cycloids, hypocycloids, epicyclodes, and, of course, many rows of roses.

Previous Math Circle Meetings Fall 2013

All talks are at 6pm in Ingraham Hall room 120, unless otherwise noted.

Date and RSVP links	Speaker	Topic (click for more info)
October 7, 2013	Gheorghe Craciun	Games Puzzles and Theorems in Geometry
October 14, 2013	Gheorghe Craciun	Games Puzzles and Theorems in Geometry
October 21, 2013	Uri Andrews	King Chicken Theorems
October 28 2013	Uri Andrews	King Chicken Theorems
November 4 2013	Jean-Luc Thiffeault	The Mathematics of Juggling
November 11 2013	Theodora Hinkle	TBA
November 18 2013	Theodora Hinkle	TBA
November 25 2013	TBA	TBA

Previous Math Circle Meetings Spring 2013

More details about each talk to follow soon. All talks are at 6pm in Van Vleck Hall, room B231, unless otherwise noted.

Date and RSVP links	Speaker	Topic (click for more info)
February 4, 2013 Register!	Jonathan Kane	Infinitely Often
February 11, 2013 Register!	Jean-Luc Thiffeault	Making taffy with the Golden mean
February 18, 2013 Register!	Alison Gordon Lynch	Guarding an Art Gallery
February 25, 2013 Register!	Mimansa Vahia	Origami
Wed., Feb. 27, 2013 (Public Lecture, 5pm, B239)	David Perry	The Coming of Enigma
March 4, 2013 Register!	Betsy Stovall	The Game of Nim
March 11, 2013 Register!	Greg Shinault	Pythagorean Triples: A Personal Interview
March 18, 2013 Register!	Elaine Brow	Doodling and Graph Theory
March 25, 2013 Register!	Spring Break	No Meeting
April 1, 2013 Register!	Uri Andrews	A Mathematician's April Fools
April 8, 2013 Register!	Daniel Ross	String puzzles
April 15, 2013 Register!	Silas Johnson	How to Win (or not) at Tic-Tac-Toe
April 22, 2013 Register!	Lalit Jain	Playing with Zomes

Infinitely Often

February 4th, 2013, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B231, UW-Madison campus

Infinitely Often

So you think you can add two numbers, three number, even a lot of numbers together? Well, can you add an infinite number of numbers together? See how thinking about infinite processes can be used to add infinite sums, evaluate repeating decimals, understand infinite continued fractions, and calculate areas and volumes. Also see what strange things can go wrong when dealing with infinity.

Making taffy with the Golden mean

February 11th, 2013, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B231, UW-Madison campus

Making taffy with the Golden mean

Taffy pullers are devices used to make candy or bread. They are very interesting mathematically: we can relate the number of folds of dough to some famous mathematical sequences. Some surprising numbers pop up, like the Golden mean but also its lesser-known cousins. We can use this knowledge to improve existing devices. (Warning: no actual taffy will be made. Sorry.)

Guarding an Art Gallery

February 18th, 2013, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B231, UW-Madison campus

Guarding an Art Gallery

How many guards does it take to guard an art gallery so that every spot in the gallery can be seen by at least one guard? We will explore this question and find an upper bound on the number of necessary guards based only on the number of walls in the gallery.

The Coming of Enigma

Special Public Lecture: Wednesday, February 27th, 2013, 5pm, Van Vleck Hall room B239, UW-Madison campus

The Enigma machine was a cryptodevice used by the Germans before and during World War II and was considered to provide unbreakable security. This belief was founded on very solid principles which will be outlined in this talk. Taking a two-millennia tour through the history of cryptology, we will come to understand the design principles that went into the Enigma and understand how it worked and how it was used. We will also touch on how espionage, treason, and sibling rivalry provided Polish mathematicians the necessary ingredients to break the unbreakable. This talk is geared towards the general public, with no specific expertise in mathematics assumed.

Origami

February 25th, 2013, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B231, UW-Madison campus

Origami is the art of folding paper, and it involves some cool math, too. Come to find out more!

The Game of Nim

March 4th, 2013, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B231, UW-Madison campus

Nim is a two-player game wherein the players alternate taking one or more stones from a pile (there are two or more piles at the beginning). The player who takes the last stone wins. We will spend most of the time playing and trying to come up with winning strategies. At the end, we will talk a little about the history a general strategy to win the game.

Pythagorean Triples: A Personal Interview

March 11th, 2013, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B231, UW-Madison campus

We all know the Pythagorean theorem from geometry, which tells us the relationship between the side lengths of any right triangle: a^2 + b^2 = c^2, where c is the length of the hypotenuse. Sometimes we are very lucky, when a, b, and c are natural numbers such as 3, 4, and 5. That is called a Pythagorean triple. We're going take a close look at these characters and figure out a few of their less-than-obvious traits.

Doodling and Graph Theory

March 18th, 2013, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B231, UW-Madison campus

Some of the pencil-and-paper games we play in notebook margins use more math than meets the eye. We'll try out a few fun and simple doodling puzzles, and see how they translate to some basic questions in graph theory. Then we'll harness our new theory to find quick solutions to whole groups of puzzles.

A Mathematician's April Fools

April 1st, 2013, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B231, UW-Madison campus

A paradox is a seemingly logically valid argument that leads to absurd conclusions. Mathematicians are always very careful to avoid accidentally using one, but they can be useful and fun to play with.

String puzzles

April 8th, 2013, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B231, UW-Madison campus

They may be familiar from novelty shops or even your mantlepiece--a bit of string wound around and through some configuration of objects, asking you to accomplish some apparently impossible rearrangement or removal. Part of their difficulty comes from hopelessly infinite array of available moves--do you perhaps tie a clever knot here? Maybe pass a bight through there? We'll look at a few examples and see how to distill them to something more manageable, and even turn some into puzzles that can be solved instead only on paper (no drawing skills required).

How to Win (or not) at Tic-Tac-Toe

April 15th, 2013, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B231, UW-Madison campus

Playing with Zomes

April 22nd, 2013, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B231, UW-Madison campus

This week we will and study the symmetric and magic of 3 dimensional shapes. Be ready to get your hands dirty and make your own stellated icosahedron!

Previous Math Circle Meetings Fall 2012

Date and RSVP links	Speaker	Topic (click for more info)	Event and poster links
October 1, 2012: Register	Richard Askey	Counting: to and then beyond the binomial theorem	Combined High School Math Night & Math Circle (Poster)
October 8, 2012: Register	Philip Matchett Wood	Proofs with Parity	Math Circle
October 15, 2012: Register	Philip Matchett Wood	Fun Flipping Coins	Math Circle (Poster)
October 22, 2012: Register	Saverio Spagnolie	Random walks: how gamblers lose and microbes diffuse	Combined High School Math Night & Math Circle (Poster)
October 29, 2012: Register	Beth Skubak	non-Euclidean geometry	Math Circle (Poster)
November 5, 2012: Register	Mihai Stoiciu	Rubik's Cubes	Combined High School Math Night & Math Circle (Poster)
November 12, 2012: Register	Alison Gordon	Curious Catalan Numbers	Math Circle (Poster)
November 19, 2012: Register	Gregory Shinault	Tiling Problems	Math Circle
November 26, 2012: Register	Claire Blackman	Binary Numbers	Math Circle

Counting: to and then beyond the binomial theorem

October 8th, 2012, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B223, UW-Madison campus

Presenter: Richard Askey. How many ways can zeros and ones be put into n places? It is easy to see this is 2^n. It is also easy to show that there are n! ways of ordering n different objects. There are problems which go beyond these two. How many ways can k zeros and n-k ones be put into n places? How many inversions are there in the n! ways of ordering the numbers 1,2,...,n. [123 has no inversions, 132 has one, 312 has two, 321 has three]. These will lead us to what has been called "The world of q".

Proofs with Parity

October 8th, 2012, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B223, UW-Madison campus

Presenter: Philip Matchett Wood. Parity---matching objects up in pairs---is a surprisingly useful tool for answering math questions. Bring a pencil and notebook, and we will explore many different situations where parity plays a role.

Fun Flipping Coins

October 15th, 2012, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B223, UW-Madison campus

Presenter: Philip Matchett Wood. Flip a coin many times, and what happens? A whole mess of cool probability, that what! Bring a notebook, pencil, and some sharp common sense.

Random walks: how gamblers lose and microbes diffuse

October 22nd, 2012, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B223, UW-Madison campus

Presenter: Saverio Spagnolie. We will explore one of the most famous mathematical models of random activity, the random walk. After an introduction to some basic ideas from probability, we will see that the same mathematical tools can be used to study completely different types of problems. In particular, we will find that there are no gambling strategies that can be used to beat the casino, and that tiny microorganisms can't stop moving even if they want to!

Non-Euclidean geometry

October 29th, 2012, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B223, UW-Madison campus

Presenter: Beth Skubak. Most of the geometry we see in school is based on the ideas of the Greek mathematician Euclid, who lived around 300 BC. While his ideas are pretty useful, we want to consider geometry in some "non-Euclidean" scenarios, like when instead of being flat, our surfaces are curved.

Rubik's Cubes

November 5th, 2012, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B223, UW-Madison campus

Presenter: Mihai Stoiciu. Rubik's Cubes. Some people describe mathematics as the science of patterns. We will explore patterns, permutations, orientations, and counting with the famous Rubik's Cube.

Curious Catalan Numbers

November 12th, 2012, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B223, UW-Madison campus

Presenter: Alison Gordon. The Catalan numbers are a sequence that shows up as solutions to all sorts of problems in mathematics. Join us as we count handshakes, match parentheses, and build mountains in order to understand these interesting numbers!

Tiling Problems

November 19th, 2012, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B223, UW-Madison campus

Presenter: Greg Shinault. Remember tangrams? You know, given some tiles build a specific shape using them. That is an example of a tiling problem, and to some mathematicians they are serious business. We are going to play with a variety of these puzzles, and talk about some of the things that have been figured out about them.

Binary Numbers

November 26th, 2012, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B223, UW-Madison campus

Presenter: Claire Blackman. We're all used to doing arithmetic with the 10 digits 0 to 9. But there's no reason why we shouldn't use just two digits, 0 and 1, instead. We'll be exploring the world of binary arithmetic, which is based on powers of two.

Previous Math Circle Meetings Spring 2012

Date	Speaker	Talk (click for more info)
February 13, 2012	Patrick LaVictoire	Transforms: Pictures in Disguise
February 20, 2012	Uri Andrews	Hercules and the Hydra
February 27, 2012	Peter Orlik	Madison Math Circles
March 5, 2012	Jean-Luc Thiffeault	The hagfish: the slimiest fish in the sea
March 12, 2012	Cathi Shaughnessy	Archimedes' method
March 19, 2012	Andrei Caldararu	Games with the binary number system
March 26, 2012	Laurentiu Maxim	How many pentagons and hexagons does it take to make a soccer ball?

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Transforms: Pictures in Disguise

February 13th, 2012, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B223, UW-Madison campus

Presenter: Patrick LaVictoire. How are computer graphics like a massive game of Sudoku? How does a CAT scan get a 3D picture from a bunch of 2D X-ray images? How can you make the same image look like different people when viewed from close up and far away? I'll discuss all these and more, with some neat illustrations and quick games.

Hercules and the Hydra

February 20th, 2012, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B223, UW-Madison campus

Presenter: Uri Andrews. We will talk about important techniques of self-defense against an invading Hydra. The following, from Pausanias (Description of Greece, 2.37.4) describes the beginning of the battle of Hercules against the Lernaean hydra:

"As a second labour he ordered him to kill the Lernaean hydra. That creature, bred in the swamp of Lerna, used to go forth into the plain and ravage both the cattle and the country. Now the hydra had a huge body, with nine heads, eight mortal, but the middle one immortal. . . . By pelting it with fiery shafts he forced it to come out, and in the act of doing so he seized and held it fast. But the hydra wound itself about one of his feet and clung to him. Nor could he effect anything by smashing its heads with his club, for as fast as one head was smashed there grew up two..."

For more information on some of the conjectures discussed during this talk see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collatz_conjecture and http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CollatzProblem.html

Madison Math Circles

February 27th, 2012, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B223, UW-Madison campus

Presenter: Peter Orlik. A short introduction to elementary and middle school activities in Madison like Mathematical Olympiad and Mathcounts will be followed by some challenging problems. Please bring your favorite pencils and be prepared to work!

The hagfish: the slimiest fish in the sea

March 5th, 2012, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B223, UW-Madison campus

Presenter: Jean-Luc Thiffeault. The hagfish is a bottom-dwelling, scavenger fish that resembles an eel. It has some interesting peculiarities: first, it sometimes willingly ties itself in a knot. Second, it secretes a spectacular amount of slime, which is used in the cosmetics industry. For a long time the purpose of this slime was unknown, but recently scientists have filmed live hagfish using it. (I'll keep this purpose a secret until the talk...) I'll then discuss how we can apply mathematical tools to study hagfish slime.

Archimedes' method

March 12th, 2012, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B223, UW-Madison campus

Presenter: Cathi Shaughnessy. Students will use Archimedes' classical method to determine bounds for the value of the number pi. Please BRING A CALCULATOR with you for this presentation. The presenter will provide compass, protractor, straightedge and worksheet for each student.

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Games with the binary number system

March 19th, 2012, 6pm, Van Vleck Hall room B223, UW-Madison campus

Presenter: Andrei Caldararu. I will present a few games and tricks which use the binary number system. For more information about binary numbers please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_numeral_system

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How many pentagons and hexagons does it take to make a soccer ball?

March 26th, 2012, 6:30pm (note special time!!!), Van Vleck Hall room B223, UW-Madison campus

Presenter: Laurentiu Maxim. I will first introduce the concept of Euler characteristic of a polyhedral surface. As an application, I will show how one can find the number of pentagons on a soccer ball without actually counting them.

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