Summer Research Opportunities

The Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA anounces their Research in Industrial Projects (RIPS) Program for 2008. Click on the flyer to see the details (or follow the links above), but programs like this run throughout the nation and provide excellent research opportunities at the undergraduate level for math majors and students of other majors interested in research involving applications of pure and applied mathematics.

Applications can be submitted online, the deadline is in February, and many FAQS are noted here....

Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have concerning this and/or other opportunities. I will post any other calls for applications of this type under the same tag.

Essential Calculus Environment

To all interested: We changed our textbook for our Calculus Series for Physical Scientists and Engineers. The new text is called Single Variable Essential Calculus by James Stewart.

It is a boiled down version of the standard Stewart Calculus text and also published by Thomson Brooks/Cole. It is smaller, lighter, cheaper and not so filled with the extraneous information that fills most every text on the subject these days. I am doing Calculus II at the moment, and I find it quite concise and well developed. Any embellishments that I would like to see, I am happy to do on my own in lecture.

In fact, most of the stuff excised from the regular version of Stewart Calculus has been offloaded to the author's website http://www.stewartcalculus.com/.

I am interested in the student's reactions to the book. Please comment below on your reaction to the text. The more detail you can give, the better. If in the eyes of the students, it is a terrible book, we need to know that.

Thanx....

Putnam Training Sessions, Fall 2007

The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition takes place on December 1 this year.

This note is just a reminder that the Mathematics Department is conducting weekly training and proactice sessions designed for students to prepare for the competition. These session are headed by one of the graduate students here in the Math Department: Hamid Hezari.

The sessions are held on Thursday evenings, from 6pm to 8pm in Krieger 308. Pizza and drinks will be present.

Cheers....

The German Abitur

With the ever increasing number of students coming in to JHU with advanced placement credits in calculus under their arms, we are now getting a larger and larger number of students who have studied abroad prior to attending Hopkins. Many of these students also have some sort of advanced training.

As a means to recognize this international form of advanced placement, we look at the exam curricula, both in content and level, and compare it to what we offer as coursework here. The Advanced Placement AB and BC exams correspond roughly to what we offer as Calculus I and II, respectively.

We have been looking at the German Abitur lately, and have come to the conclusion that the Mathematics Department will accept a score of 10 or above (out of 15) for 4 credits of either 110.106 or 110.108 Calculus I. This is fairly consistent with that of MIT, and Duke as well as others.

So far, other international exams will have to be examined on a case by case basis.

Come talk to me if this conclusion is of interest to you. Also, as I learn more I will append this post or add others under the Advanced Placement tag.

The Hunt!

Well, rumors come to pass at times.

The Math Club here at Hopkins has successfully organized and caried out a puzzle hunt, whereby student teams compete to solve a series of logical puzzles that carry them accross campus over the course of a day to find a hidden object (The Notorious Field's Medallion; The Field's Medal is a high award offered to outstanding accomplishments in research mathematics, and is treated much like the Nobel Prizes are in the sciences. The award is named after a mathematician who spent time here at Hopkins. Hecen we name our object after him also.)

I will talk more about the hunt in time. But suffice it to say that there will be a 2nd Hunt next Fall in September.

Congratulations both to the organizers of the Hunt, and to the winners.

Competitive Mathematics

Welcome back to everyone who has been here at Hopkins, and welcome to those who are new.

A word about some fall events. Mathematics is many things to many people, but to some it is actually a competitive sport. Here at Hopkins, we have two upcoming competitions that we register teams for and participate in:

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

Both are distributed exam competitions, which means they are offered locally at a university who has students registered to take the exam. Both offer undergraduate-level mathematics problems that require cleverness to solve well, and both offer cash prizes as well as the prestige of doing well in the competition. In fact, doing well on the Putnam is an accomplishment that should be placed prominantly on a resume or curriculum vitae (an academic resume, so to speak). And the Math Department offers a cash prize to the best performer from JHU. Last year, our two top Putnam performers ranked at 140th and 154th out of some 3640 participants.

Registration for the VTech competition is basically a matter for the Math Dept. here, and we will be registered. The exam is on Saturday, October 27, from 9am-11:30am.

Registration for the 68th national Putnam exam closes sometime around October 12, and the exam is held on Saturday, December 1, from 10am-1pm and 3pm-6pm.

If you are interested in either of these competitions (and as a math major, I highly recommend that you consider these exams part of your training as a mathematician), please come in to talk to me. The Department also offers training sessions, organized with the Math Club here at Hopkins, which are weekly seminars. But more on that later....

Math in the Media - First Do the Math

So, is extra high school math actually "good" for you? There is some evidence here....

An article in the Washington Post by Health and Science writer Rick Weiss (July 30, 2007), entitled "First, Do the Math" details the results of a study performed by researchers at Harvard and the University of Virginia. Basically, taking an extra biology, physics or chemistry course in high school provides a boost in grade values for the college versions of these courses. But only in the respective field of the course. And no boost is seen in the other fields.

However, taking an extra math course in high school provides a boost in all three areas plus mathematics. More bang for your buck in that plan. The money quote from the article:

"The one thing that helped students do well in all college science was having taken an advanced high school math class. That undermines a commonly held belief that math training is not particularly important or helpful for the study of biology."

I venture the same can be said for an extra college math course, or even a math minor. But, then again, I am biased....