Math and the Media: A Mathemagician?

To some, possibly any and all math is simply magic. It seems to work and who knows what is really going on behind the math doers back. Then you learn the "trick" and it all seems perfectly natural. Until the next "trick", that is....

On the late night satirical news program "The Colbert Report" tonight (January 27, 2010, 11:30pm EST on Comedy Central) is Arthur Benjamin, a Hopkins bred mathematician (PhD in 1989) currently at Harvey Mudd College. A self-styled "mathemagician", he combines mathematics and magic to explore the power of mathematics through stunts and feats of mental agility.

You can visit the Hopkins Alumni page for this announcement (there is a neat video of one of his talks). Better yet, stop by Stephen's place for the show.

Summer Research Op....

This just came in across my desk.

A summer research opportunity for math majors, called the The Research in Industrial Projects (RIPS) Program, a venture of the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). The RIPS Program "provides an opportunity for exceptional students in math and related disciplines to work in teams on real world research projects by a sponsor from [either] industry or a national lab." From the website:

Projects are selected to have a major mathematical component and to be something that will pose an interesting challenge to talented undergraduates. Recent projects have included how to do a physics-based animation of a lava lamp, how to stitch together two images, how to analyze cancer data using microarrays, statistical data assimilation methods for weather data, modeling particle transport phenomena in reactors, and designing missions to the moons of Jupiter.

Recent projects have included organizations like Pixar, Microsoft, Symantec, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, among others.

Details can be found at www.ipam.ucla.edu/rips, and the deadline for applying in February 15, 2010. Happy op hunting!

So you want to teach?

Hey soon-to-be-math-major grads.....

Any interest in teaching? Building a career with good time off (think summers!), a relatively stress-free environment, stable career, and that good feeling one gets when you realize you are making a difference in someone else's life?

Math for America (MfA), an organization whose mission is "to improve math education in US public secondary schools by recruiting, training and retaining outstanding mathematics teachers", is offering five-year Fellowships to earn a Master's Degree in Mathematics Education and a teaching position. They are seeking 60 new fellows in the New York City area alone (with other opportunities in DC, Los Angeles and San Diego).

The New York City fellows will get their degree from MfA NY partner universities Bard College, NYU or the Teacher's College at Columbia.

The fellowship includes all tuition for the degree, a total five year stipend of 100K and a regular teacher's salary for the last four years of the fellowship. An excellent opportunity to be trained the right way. All of the contact information and application stuff is on the website. I have additional contact info with me, should you be interested.

They are actively looking for new fellows. Be a part of it?

Math in the Media - Teaching a Supreme...

Many common concepts and terms in mathematics are of general use outside of math. Think of adjectives like "tangental" and "functional". The mathematical definition and the non-mathematical meanings are usually quite similar.

Today in the Washington Post, Robert Blake writes of a recent exchange within the confines of a Supreme Court session. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy asked a question to University of Michigan law professor Richard D. Friedman. Friedman answered the question,

"but added that it was "entirely orthogonal" to the argument he was making in Briscoe v. Virginia.

Friedman attempted to move on, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. stopped him.

"I'm sorry," Roberts said. "Entirely what?"

"Orthogonal," Friedman repeated, and then defined the word: "Right angle. Unrelated. Irrelevant."

"Oh," Roberts replied.

A nice answer, as almost every first-year student here at Hopkins in engineering or the natural sciences can attest. No dot-product needed. It goes on:

Friedman again tried to continue, but he had caught the interest of Justice Antonin Scalia, who considers himself the court's wordsmith. Scalia recently criticized a lawyer for using "choate" to mean the opposite of "inchoate," a word that has created a debate in the dictionary world.

"What was that adjective?" Scalia asked Monday. "I liked that."

"Orthogonal," Friedman said.

"Orthogonal," Roberts said.

"Orthogonal," Scalia said. "Ooh."

Friedman seemed to start to regret the whole thing, saying the use of the word was "a bit of professorship creeping in, I suppose," but Scalia was happy.

"I think we should use that in the opinion," he said.

"Or the dissent," added Roberts, who in this case was in rare disagreement with Scalia.

See what Hopkins Math can offer you? Something to teach even a Supreme Court Justice.

Math Blog from the Other Coast

An excellent mathematics-based blog has come across my (virtual) desk:

What's new

The diarist, Terence Tao, a professor in the Mathematics Department at UCLA, explores mostly his research and related issues, so some of the posts may be stratospheric and out of the reach of many math enthusiasts. But there are also posts with good air-pressure, and some excellent advice on math-related careers and writing techniques, as well as mathematical constructs and such. For instance, his latest post on the nature of "proof-by-contradiction" makes for excellent reading. Give it a try!

Mathematics Study Tips - Banking practice problems

In the recent post Mathematics Study Tips - Scrimmaging, I talked about a method for studying for a mathematics exam by mimicking, as best as you can, the exam environment. Sounds obvious, right? One doesn't create a soldier by watching war movies. The idea of practicing for an exam by doing new problems in a timed environment works to gauge your understanding of the material while reducing the stress of an exam by acclimating yourself to the climate within the exam. Here is another idea, mentioned in that last post:

In an actual exam, there usually will NOT be a marker on each problem telling you, for example, that "this problem is from Section 3.2 on the Mean Value Theorem". Instead, all you will see is the statement of the problem (and an implicit promise by the Instructor that the problem falls within the scope of the course). Without the context of which section the problem came from, can you still manage to do the problem? One way to help you to be sure is to take your problems out of the context they are in. Try this:

After each section of a text has been discussed in lecture and you have completed the homework problems for submission, take some time to re-write some of the other section exercises (ones that are "like" the ones in your homework set) in a common place later in your notebook. Add other problems when other sections are completed. Rewrite these problems verbatim from the text, but do not write the section or problem number. Don't DO these problems, just bank them for later.

Now when the exam approaches, and you are looking for items to focus on, go to this section of your notebook, grab 5 or 6 of these "banked" problems, go to a quiet, distraction-less place, and time yourself doing these problems without notes, text, or any other aid. If you can do the problems with ease, you are ready for these types of problems on the exam. If you cannot, however, or if some of them prove difficult, then simply re-orient these problem problems with their original sections and note these sections as ones you still need to focus on. Out of context, these problems are much closer to what you will see on an exam.

Another way to do this is to work with someone else, who can grab a problem from the text without telling you which section it comes from. While this is easier and requires little prior planning, it does involve more than one person. But then again, talking mathematics with others is really how one learns, right?

Again, in bocca al lupo!

Math in the Media - The Professional Take

Got an interesting email blast on a service offered by one of the professional organizations for mathematicians, the American Mathematical Society (AMS). The heads-up comes from Dr. Ellen Maycock, the Associate Executive Director of the AMS. An excerpt:

The American Mathematical Society would like to remind you of a special service we offer, Headlines & Deadlines for Students, providing email notification of mathematics news and of upcoming deadlines that are of special interest to both graduate and undergraduate students. These email notifications will be issued about once a month, and when there's special news. Imminent deadlines will be included in these emails, which will link to a web page that's a centralized source for information relevant to students and faculty advisors, at

http://www.ams.org/news-for-students/.

We hope that you will share this email with the appropriate individuals in your department. It's not necessary to be a member of the AMS to sign up for this email service, at

http://www.ams.org/news-for-students/signup.

I will add that the news items highlighted on this website may also be of interest to pure enthusiasts of this discipline (and not just students of the field). It's good stuff, and I will be highlighting at times some articles mentioned here. But for now, take a look and sign up if you want the email service.