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Math Circle at Exploration School

Exploration School is a summer enrichment program housed at the campuses of St. Mark’s School (Junior– grades 4-7), Wellesley College (Intermediate– grades 8-9), and Yale University (Senior– grades 10-12). This summer I had the opportunity to work as an instructor at the Intermediate Program. My ingredients were students with a love of learning, a room to put them, and a bunch of math games and puzzles– my result was Math Circle! 

The Math Circle at Explo happened 3 times– each time, there were more kids excited to play SET, solve Rubix cubes, and work on problems. Some students attended in order to try the games, and some students wanted to practice algebra, trigonometry, or even calculus!
An important concept at Exploration School is legacy– there is an overarching goal to create a safe, unique and exciting space that eager students can come back to summer after summer. Perhaps Math Circle will become a legacy!
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Here’s a picture of Nathaniel from our first Math Circle session at Sarah Hull Hallock Library in Milton yesterday. What do you think of his origami creations?

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Added: static pages

I just added our first static page! Normally, posts cycle out and you have to find them in the archives, but not so with a static page. Blogger allows up to 10 static pages, and the first one I added is “Calendar”.

It’s easy to do: from the Posting tab, just choose “Edit Pages”. It’s pretty clear from there.

Here’s a webpage that walks you through it as well: blogger-static-pages

The question now is, what static pages should we add? Please comment on this post with your suggestions for static pages.

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Writing Mathematics on our Blog with Texify!

I just learned today from Mary O’Keeffe how to include mathematics on blogger. It’s not native, but does the trick, and especially a little useful if you know a little LaTeX, the mathematical typesetting language.

Let’s say you want to typset the quadratic formula. In LaTeX, you would write this as

$\frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 – 4ac}}{2a}$

Now just visit the texify web site: Texify and insert the LaTeX code where specified. The Texify website will then automatically generate html code for your formula, resulting in:

\frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a}
It works pretty well. If I had a blogger wish, it would be for LaTeX to be recognized natively!
For those who don’t know, Mary O’Keeffe directs the Albany Area Math Circle and is also co-director for the Math Prize for Girls. She’s a great resource for math circles around the country, and seeing as our math circles are so close together, I’ve hoped for several years that we’ll find ways to coordinate some math circle activities. One idea – let’s visit the Museum of Mathematics together when they open in 2012!
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Set

I think that SET is my favorite Math Circle game. Not only is it challenging and fast-paced, but it has a great community aspect to it: players can join in during the middle of the game, or choose to play for a few minutes. A friend of mine found a SET app on her phone the other day, so we were playing while at a local Open-Mic night. A second friend saw it, played with us until she found a SET, and then returned to her group. It’s that fast, and that fun.

Another way to play SET is to visit this website. There are 12 cards on the table and 6 SETs that you must find; every day there is a new puzzle. How long does it take you to find them all? My record is 42 seconds–can you beat that?

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Calendar Added

I just added the Bard Math Circle calendar to this blog. It’s in the right column, in agenda form. I added a gadget, and searched for one that adds a calendar. Easier than I thought it would be!

This means that we should start populating the calendar with Fall semester events.

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The Bard Math Circle Logo

We now have a logo! Featured on the right side of this page, you’ll see a version of the Fibonacci Spiral, designed by artist David Levine. The Fibonacci Spiral consists of squares, each with a 90 degree arc, arranged in a spiral form. The dimensions of the rectangle are consecutive Fibonacci numbers, and thus approximate the Golden Ratio.

We’re looking forward to featuring this logo on all Bard Math Circle materials!

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Bard Math Circle loves Brownies!

When I learned that Marlboro Brownie Troop 60050 need to earn their Math Fun Badge I knew just how to help them. My daughter Jordan is in the troop and I spoke to the troop leader Rosemary Greiner and volunteered my Math Circle games! She was enthusiastic and I planned a fun evening for the girls.

The games were set up at different centers. The one player games were at one center, the SET game was at another center, two player games were at a third center and I had a worksheet of fun math problems at the fourth center. Since the girls needed five activities to get the badge Rosemary also counted when they each took turns being the cashier at their Girl Scout Cookie Booth Sale.

At the end of the night they earned their Math Fun Badge and I can honestly say everyone had fun and they were using and improving math skills!

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Hello World!

The Bard Math Circle is starting a blog! Traditionally, first programs in Computer Science do nothing other than print out the message “Hello World!”, and this seems fitting.

I’ve invited some authors, each has permission to post messages. Let’s use this summer to try out blogspot features. The goal is to master them before we start the fall semester.

Japheth