New Text....

We will be changing the text for the fall 2009 and beyond semesters for the courses 110.108-9 Calculus I-II (Phys. Sci. & Eng.). The old text was the red book at left: "Single Variable Essential Calculus" by James Stewart (ISBN-13: 9780495109556).

The new text comes from the same author, and is really simply the expanded version of the same material. It is "Single Variable Calculus: Early Transcendentals" (ISBN-13: 9780495011699).

The summer courses will continue to use the old text. Sorry for the inconvenience. This new choice will be stable for a while, we believe.

Back again, eh?

Hello all again.

After a long hiatus, I decided to begin posting here again. There were reasons for the gap in attendance on my part. But I do notice that some posts are read long after their birthdate, and people do find their content useful. So I will start up again and continue to post on current events, mathematics issues, and department-related matters. For instance, we have started a Facebook group devoted to matters concerning the department. To see it, you will need FB access. Just do a search on our data.

Also new, we will again be changing the textbook for our course sequence 110.108-9 Calculus I-II (Eng. & Phys. Sci.). The author will be the same as the previous book (James Stewart), but we will be using the expanded version. When I get the ISBN, I will pass it along.

Talk to you soon.

2008 Competitions

Hello again to the mathematical community here at Hopkins.

It is again the fall, and it is again the time for competition. The two upcoming fall events are:

• The Virginia Tech Regional Mathematics Contest, and
• The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition.

(a special note: The Putnam link above is to the page that should be shortly updated to reflect the 2008 exam information.)

As last year's post stated, both are distributed exam competitions, offered locally here at Hopkins, at the undergraduate-level. Both offer cash prizes and all the prestige your time can buy. Read last year's post for more details.

For this year, we are already registered for VTech, whic is given November 1 in the morning. Again, there is no need to individually register for this until the day of the competition. I will post more about this in a couple of week. Also, I wil broadcast via email to all math majors and Math Club members.

Registration for the 69th national Putnam exam closes sometime around October 12, and the exam is held on Saturday, December 6, from 10am-1pm and 3pm-6pm.

Again, we will be offering training sessions, organized with the Math Club here at Hopkins, which will again be weekly seminars, hosted by the same graduate student we used last year. Details to come.

Low Stress Job?!!?

Very interesting quick view from the outside on the life of a mathematician, from the world out-there: According to Laurence Shatkin, author of "150 Best Low-Stress Jobs," as detailed in the Yahoo! hotjobs section, a mathematician with a Ph.D. can earn a starting salary in the 80s while enjoying a relatively stress-free life: The money quote:

"[T]he most stressful aspects of the job are the importance of being exact and a level of competition, in essence it's all good."

I have to admit that there may be a bit more stress in one's life than simply the overpowering compulsion to be exact. And the competition among mathematicians can be quite fierce in its own way (although in truth we have nothing on the social scientists: Our theories (theorems) are usually not judged on the matter of being correct. We cannot have competing theorems like in economics and sometimes in physics. What is right is right, after all. Our competition is more a matter of who proves something first, or in the most beautiful way, or just how "interesting" our results are).

And while some of my mathematician friends over at the National Security Agency and NASA, or some of the securities specialists on Wall Street (you would be surprised on how many mathematicians work in lower Manhattan) may quibble with Shatkin's quote that "[m]athematicians are not under pressure as this isn't life and death; they're dealing with theoretical realms," I have to admit it is a good life.

Something to consider, anyway....

The Putnam Results!

The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition for 2007 results have just been announced. And we have good news to announce: Two of our participants have received special recognition for their performance. The recognition comes in the form of a set of special categories marking the top performers and based on their ranking given by their overall exam score. Our two top finishers placed in the top 100 out of the 3753 participants of this year's competition:

Kihyuk Hong, a senior, received the title of "Honorable Mention", given to those whose score ranks them between 27.5 and 74, out of the 3753 contestants who participated.

Sunny Kam, a freshman, placed in the next category (oddly titled only category "I"), for rankings between 78 and 94.

These two contestants will have their names published as top performers on this examination in the American Mathematical Monthly in the near future. The results of the exam this year, and the distribution of scores, can be found at the Mathematical Association of America's American Mathematics Competitions website for the Putnam at:

http://www.unl.edu/amc/a-activities/a7-problems/putnamindex.shtml

Also, three registrants can act as a team for the competition. Hopkins was one of the 413 institutions to enter a team, and we placed 22 this year.

Altogether, this was an excellent performance by our students. Congratulations to all who participated.

Math in the Media - Pi Day

Kind of a weird thing to me, but weird can be fun also, eh?

Happy Pi Day, 3-14, that is....

But what about the actual Pi Moment? Maybe 3-14 at 59 minutes, 26.54 seconds...? Close, anyway, what?

Research Opportunity

Here is an interesting internship that may run for a while: Acting as a resident Math Expert for a series on fairly low-level mathematics-based puzzles set to air on public television here in Maryland. Can you think of a better way to enter an interesting career path as an Expert right out of the box?

I am filing this as a research opportunity, although I think it is more of a fun thing to do and a good resume builder, especially for those of you who want to fill out your resume with serious activities of a more unusual flavor.

The only less-than-ideal thing about this internship is that it is unpaid. But I believe the bragging rights and networking (please excuse the pun) possibilities make a strong alternative form of payment. I will stay in contact with the person over there who sent me this. I definitely think this is quite interesting and wonder what else we could do for Maryland Public Television.... Ideas?