Today marks the midpoint of our favorite week! As CAMPers arrive, they sign up for an elective and make their way to the art classroom to enjoy some games and puzzles, waking up their brains before heading to the first class of the day.
The Sine group continues their work on combinatorics. Previously, CAMPers had been put in pairs to work on different combinatoric problems. Today, they share their problems, explaining their thought processes.
The CAMPers realize that their problems have related to a common answer- 10- allowing them to work together to search for connections and patterns in their work that would generate this conclusion.
The CAMPers use what they notice to begin looking for strategies to solve more problems. They end class introducing Pascal’s Triangle, encouraged to look for patterns within the triangle that relate with what they did.
At the same time, the Cosine group continues their work on the triangular numbers and various representations. The past few days, CAMPers had been paired up and given different scenarios on the triangular numbers. Today, they get the opportunity to present those scenarios in front of the class, explaining thinking and strategies.
Their work shows a connection in what they have been working on, allowing CAMPers to collectively work through the formulas and figure out the problems. They discuss patterns and observations.
Once math classes is wrapped up, CAMPers head to their second class of the day with the Tangent group going to the computer lab and the Cotangent group to art class.
In art class, CAMPers learn the history of perspective, and explore paintings from before this concept was used in artwork. They talk about how art has changed geometrically now that there is greater knowledge of math in a creative context.
CAMPers use this discussion to create pictures using vanishing point and horizon line, making their own geometrical images with perspective.
In computer science, the Tangent group recaps what they’ve learned so far before getting the opportunity to work on challenges. They do one together, experimenting with inputs and collectively calculating their outputs. They write a function to find the absolute value between two numbers to calculate differences between numbers before working with each other to write code as a class.
CAMPers are then given three additional challenges. Using the driver-navigator partner system, they continue exploring Python and finding answers to questions.
After a relaxing and plentiful lunch, CAMPers go to the elective of their choice.
In today’s electives, CAMPers can either test their hand-eye coordination and learn juggling, decorate a dilapidated dodecahedron sculpture on campus, or begin Shiven’s two-day paper bridge engineering challenge.
Today in Shiven’s elective CAMPers were tasked with stacking as many textbooks as they could on only one index card. The winner stacked 39 total textbooks! They finished with a discussion of tactics and observations.
What fun electives! CAMPers then move to their third and final class of the day. The Tangent group goes to art where they have their own discussion about the history of perspective in art, adding new observations to the subject. They use this new knowledge to create drawings using the same aspects they just saw.
In afternoon computer science, the Cotangent group first goes over what they’ve already done before being given the opportunity to ask any questions they may have about what they’ve learned.
They collaboratively run through a line of code, working together to fix any mishaps and make corrections. CAMPers learn the difference between arithmetic and boolean operators before being challenged with using the driver-navigator system to write their own functions in Python.
Thanks for another great day at Bard Math CAMP! Today was filled with a lot of excitement and even more learning. We cannot wait to pick up where we left off tomorrow!
Photo credits: Image 34- Shoshi Cohen, Image 35- Japheth Wood, Images 1-33, 36-50, and headliner image- Sabine Harvey