Department of Mathematics
October 25, 2013
UNDERGRADUATE MATH SEMINAR
The next seminar of the term will be
DATE:
TUESDAY, October 29
Time &
4:45pm – Refreshments in Bailey 204
Location:
5:00pm – Seminar in Bailey 207
In this seminar, Union College’s own Professor Julius Barbanel will
present the following talk:
TITLE: The Euclidean Algorithm and Irrational Numbers
Professor Julius Barbanel
ABSTRACT:
The Euclidean Algorithm is a procedure for determining the greatest common
divisor of two positive integers. Irrational numbers are real numbers that cannot be expressed as
the ratio of two integers. These two ideas certainly do not seem to be related. We shall explore a
rather surprising historical connection between these ideas. This exploration will include a quick
tour of ancient Greek mathematics.
Union College Mathematics Conference a Huge Success
This past weekend, October 18-20, the Union College Math Department hosted a research
conference that several of its faculty has been organizing for the past many months. More than
100 research mathematicians from around the country (in fact, the world!) attended the
conference.
On Friday night, conference participants gathered for an informal reception. On Saturday,
continuing into Sunday, the real (and complex – tee hee) math took place and about 60 talks were
held over five concurrent sessions:
• Algebraic Topology, organized by Professors Brenda Johnson and Kathryn Lesh
• Big Data Analytics, organized by Professor Roger Hoerl
• Category Theory: A celebration of Bill Lawvere and fifty years of functorial semantics,
organized by Professors Susan Niefield and Kimmo Rosenthal
• Commutative Algebra and Algebraic Geometry, organized by Professor Leila Khatami
• Special Geometric Structures, organized by Professors Christina Tønnesen-Friedman,
Jeff Jauregui and Charles Boyer (from the University of New Mexico)
Each session also had one or two keynote addresses delivered by special invited speakers,
including Gunnar Carlsson (Stanford University), Kathryn Hess (Ecole Polytechnique Federale
de Lausanne), Anthony Iarrobino (Northeastern University), Bill Lawvere (University of Buffalo),
Claude LeBrun (SUNY Stony Brook), Ron Snee (Temple University and Snee Associates),
Gordana Todorov (Northeastern University), and Will Wylie (Syracuse University). Following
this, a conference banquet dinner was held in Old Chapel.
Page 2
News from the Math Club, by Nate Hawthorne
On Monday October 21, Professor Sarah Greenwald from
Appalachian State University (and Union class of 1991)
gave a lecture on the mathematics featured in The
Simpsons and Futurama. Olin auditorium was crowded with
more than 100 students and community members anxious
to hear this Union alum discuss math featured in modern
popular culture.
In her talk, Professor Greenwald used clips from the both
television series as a springboard into discussions about
some related (and difficult!) math problems. For example,
she showed Homer Simpson stating, “The sum of the
square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is
equal to the square root of the remaining side.” From here,
she asked the audience to correct Homer’s statement.
After that, she noted that in Homer’s mistake(s), the writers
of The Simpsons were actually paying homage to the
Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, who actually made the
same mathematical statement after he got a brain!
Then Professor Greenwald talked briefly about a setting in which Homer’s (or the Scarecrow’s)
statement might be true – namely in triangles on a sphere! She said that understanding when and
where their statement is valid is actually now known in the mathematical world as “The Scarecrow
Problem”!
Professor Greenwald has been featured on the special features disk for a Futurama movie, and
the creators of Futurama have even referenced her in one of her episodes with “The Greenwaldian
Theorem,” concerning the Scarecrow Problem.
Near the end of the lecture, Professor Greenwald engaged the audience and had them perform a
hands-on activity to try to solve a so-called “Body Switching Problem,” as featured in Futurama.
Thank you Dr. Greenwald for giving this lecture!
NEXT MATH CLUB MEETING: Wednesday, Oct. 30 at 1:00 in Bailey 204, the Math Lounge.
Problem of the Newsletter: October 25, 2013
Last week’s problem: Congratulations to Brandon Bartell (class of 2010) for submitting a correct
solution to last week’s problem. A sample solution to the problem has been posted on the bulletin
boards around Bailey Hall.
x 2013 + x 2011 − 3x 2009 + 2x 51 + 3x 50 − 2 .Find
3
the remainder (without any electronics!) when p(x) is divided by x − x
This week’s problem: Let p(x)=
Professor Friedman ([email protected], Bailey 107D) will accept solutions to this problem until
noon on Thursday, October 31.
€
€