BARD MATH CIRCLE

Instant Insanity

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Bard Math Circle
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Dear Math Lovers,

It’s that time of month again – the Bard Math Circle will meet on Saturday, November 10th, 1-3pm in the Kingston Library (upstairs in the Community Room). Middle school-aged students will engage in our math puzzles and logic games, work on a sheet of challenging problems, and build a math artifact to take home.

The problems this month are sample problems from the AMC-8 contest. In part, this is preparation for those students who will visit us at Bard College next Tuesday, November 13th to face the AMC-8 contest. But the real reason that we focus on a few challenging problems each month is as an entry point into beautiful mathematics, and seeing unusual and creative ways in which the mathematics we already know can be used to solve problems in ways we don’t expect. We still have room, so if you’re interested, please visit our AMC-8 Page for instructions on how to register.

The hands-on project this month is constructing a challenging puzzle known affectionately as Instant Insanity. It’s a simple-looking puzzle built of three wooden cubes and colored stickers, but as the name suggests, it’s insanely difficult. As a bonus, we’ll see a different way of considering the problem that makes the solution quite simple. And then you get to take the puzzle home to your family…

See you in Kingston this Saturday!

Mathematically,
                             Japheth

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Bard Math Circle
bardmathcircle@gmail.com
http://bardmathcircle.blogspot.com/

Japheth Wood

I’m Japheth Wood (he/him), the Bard Math CAMP co-director, and a math professor at Bard College. CAMP (which is an acronym for Creative and Analytical Math Program) is a very special week of the year for our young math community. It's inspiring to see our students return year after year. This is our 11th summer of CAMP! We're back once again on the idyllic Bard College campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, and thankful to the CAMP students, parents, and staff, for making this mathemagical week happen. Notably, we've (finally) had our first CAMP reunion this past June, an event that I know will grow to be an integral part of what we do.

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Frances Stern

My name is Frances Stern (she/her/hers)! I’ve been teaching math at CAMP since the first year, making sure our math theme has a connection to art and computer. It’s fun to show students math that they don’t see in school. I've retired from daily teaching but continue to teach for the New York Math Circle & students who are seeking more math in their lives. My hobbies include learning to draw, paint, & juggle, reading, walking & folk dancing. I’ve written 2 books for teachers and parents called “Adding Math, Subtracting Tension” (for different age-ranges of children). They pay as much attention to how to keep out of a fight (what many parents told me is a problem) as they do to math.

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