The Williams team led by Granger Carty ’18, Zhiqi Li ’19, Gregory Kehne ’16 and Sam Donow ’16 defended the 2015 Green Chicken, defeating Middlebury 179-134 on their home turf. For those interested then here is the exam and solutions. Early on the Saturday morning of Halloween, 14 Williams… Continue reading »
Post by Sarah Fleming ’17 and Nina Pande ’17 Last Saturday, we attended WIMIN15, a conference sponsored by the Center for Women in Mathematics at Smith College. We heard two invited speakers, Linda Chen of Swarthmore College and Mariel Vazquez of University of California at Davis. Chen… Continue reading »
The purpose of this post is to talk about the weekly math puzzle night dinners run by myself and my sidekick, Professor Miller, and to invite you to join us for this and other related activities. Here’s a quick summary of problem solving activities; for more information or to be… Continue reading »
The centennial summer meeting (“MathFest“) of the Mathematical Association of America, August 5-8, 2015, in Washington DC, featured Hedrick Lectures on “Algebra Over Finite Fields” by Karen Smith, Centennial Lectures by Erik Demaine, Jennifer Chayes, Ingrid Daubechies, Carlos Castillo-Chavez, Karen Parshall, and Manjul Bhargava, and other invited lectures… Continue reading »
AFTER IMAGES — A LEGO BRICKUMENTARY: Steven J. Miller, Associate Professor of Mathematics and instructor of The Mathematics of LEGO Bricks, will join Images Cinema Executive Director Doug Jones in a post-screening discussion about the creative possibilities of LEGOs following screenings of the family-friendly A LEGO Brickumentary on… Continue reading »
For the past two winter studies I’ve taught a course on the Mathematics of LEGO bricks, with a goal of assembling a team to assemble the 3152 piece Superstar destroyer in under 10 minutes (we just missed by a few seconds the first year, and did it in under… Continue reading »
It is often said that mathematics is universal; one of my greatest joys, both as a parent and as a professor, is finding interesting and novel ways to illustrate various concepts. Over the past few years I’ve been fortunate to work with many great SMALL students on projects related to… Continue reading »
On the way home from receiving the million-dollar Abel Prize from King Harald of Norway, John Nash, along with his wife Alicia, was killed in a taxicab crash on the New Jersey Turnpike. I was at the Abel ceremonies May 21-22 myself to give the Science Lecture. Louis… Continue reading »
It was another glorious year in the Math/Stat department at Williams. We celebrated its end with our annual banquet, packed with over 150 faculty and students. As tradition, the new majors received a beverage wrench, and everyone joined in applauding the winners of this year’s awards. Colloquium… Continue reading »
Mathematics and statistics are essential skills for most of the best six jobs in 2015, according to the latest rankings by CareerCast.com. Here are the top six jobs: 1. Actuary 2. Audiologist 3. Mathematician 4. Statistician 5. Biomedical Engineer 6. Data Scientist For more information see also the… Continue reading »