As officers of the AWM, we started the “I am Math/Stat” project as a visual representation of the diversity of experience of students in Math/Stat. We’ve put up posters in Bronfman, both at the top of the stairs and in the Math/Stat Bronfman Library. We hope to… Continue reading »
Sarah Fleming ’17 has won Honorable Mention in the Association for Women in Mathematics Essay Contest, writing about our new Assistant Professor Pamela Harris: An Unconventional Path by Sarah Fleming ’17 For most of her life, Pam Harris had no plans to become a… Continue reading »
This spring, I presented my senior colloquium on a topological game called the Banach-Mazur Game. This game was formulated by Stanislaw Mazur in 1935. It is the earliest example of an infinite game with perfect information. The game proceeds as follows. Continue reading. . John Damstra is a… Continue reading »
Williams had another strong showing in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. We had over 1.5% of campus take the exam, and our team placed in the top 50 in the nation with over 550 institutions participating. Over 4000 students took the exam nationwide and we had two students ranked… Continue reading »
Our very own Professor Palsson was featured on the show Meet & Potatoes on WilliNet, the community television for Williamstown. During the show a number of topics were covered including several mathematical in nature. Professor Palsson gave a shout out to the weekly Math Puzzle Dinners – come try them… Continue reading »
In a remarkable new paper, Maryna Viazovska has put forth a proof of a most efficient way to pack unit spheres in dimension 8. In a follow-up paper, Henry Cohn, Abhinav Kumar, Stephen D. Miller, Danylo Radchenko, and Viazovska have a similar result in dimension 24. Continue reading »
by Nela (Vukmirović) Milošević ’08 I am writing from my homeland Montenegro, a small country in the Balkans, and in this post I just wanted to give a perspective from someone who now lives far away from Williams. I am class of 2008, and I decided to go… Continue reading »
I’ve had a lot of fun with some cubing events recently in Williamstown. The first was an official cube event organized by local student Ric Donati. For results see https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/c.php?top3=Top+3&competitionId=WilliamsWinter2016 http://cubecomps.com/live.php?cid=1377 The second was earlier today, a cube workshop run by myself and my son, Cameron, at… Continue reading »
Williams College hosted a conference on the occasion of Frank Morgan’s retirement from Williams College. The conference webpage is: web.williams.edu/Mathematics/csilva/FrankFest-2016.html… Continue reading »
This is a sequel to an earlier post: To bead, or not to bead. In that post my daughter Kayla and I did a fuse bead picture of the Fibonacci spiral, and we talked about how it can be used to give a geometric proof to the sum of… Continue reading »