The Oscars of Mathematics

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Juliettte Bruce

 

Professor Ian Agol (Søren Fuglede Jørgensen, Wikipedia – Creative Commons)

Congratulations to Ian Agol for being awarded the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, the so-called, “Oscars of Science” and mathematics [1]! Tech entrepreneurs Mark Zuckerberg and Yuri Milner created the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics in 2014 to, “Reward[s] significant discoveries across the many branches of the subject.” The prize carries a 3 million dollar award, and was announced during a live televised red carpet ceremony complete with celebrities like Kate Hudson, Pharrell Williams, and Christina Aguilera.

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Teaching Calculus: Two Handy Techniques

Posted on November 5, 2015 by Mohammed Kaabar

In my five years of teaching calculus, I’ve noticed that students often struggle with partial fractions and integration by parts. Therefore, here are two alternative methods I use that are faster and easier than the traditional methods that most authors of calculus textbooks use and work on most types of problems:

  • The Cover Method: Many of my students struggle with partial fractions because of the complexity of the equations they have to solve. I decided to help them by introducing a new method called the cover method, which can solve about half of the partial fraction decomposition problems:

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A Few Math Riddles

Posted on October 30, 2015 by Irving Dai

Hello, and welcome! I wanted to make my first post for this blog about something light, so I thought I would share three of my favorite “over-the-dinner-table” math riddles/problems. These are all in the folklore, but you might not have heard of them. (I certainly didn’t make them up myself – they were told to me at various times during casual conversation.) I have posted the problems sans solutions to increase discussion!

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Posted in Math, Math Games | 2 Comments

Time to start planning your summer!

Posted on October 25, 2015 by Alexi

As the days grow shorter and pumpkin-flavored everythings begin to inundate our lives, we are just starting to accept that summer is really over.  But believe it or not, it’s already time to start planning next summer!  In this post, I have gathered some of my favorite advice on how to build your ideal mathematical summer.  First of all, here are the two big reasons why sooner is better with summer planning:

  1. Monotonically decreasing funding availability: As a general rule (with the exception of occasional opportunities which suddenly crop up), funding availability for summer math activities decreases monotonically from here on out.  A good number of summer funding deadlines are in December and January (and some even earlier), so browsing for conferences and workshops now can help protect you from missing the perfect one.
  2. Visualizing the large-scale structure of your summer: Your summer schedule probably has a lot of moving parts which might include teaching, research, visiting family and friends, conference and workshop travel, and (maybe)  Continue reading →
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Applying For A NSF GRF

Posted on October 19, 2015 by Juliettte Bruce

Welcome. As this is my first post for this blog, an introduction is probably in order. I’m David, but most people call me DJ, and I am a second year graduate student at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. My research focuses on the intersection of commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, and number theory. Outside of mathematics I enjoy watching and playing sports (Go Blue!) as well as long walks on the beach. (Kidding I’d prefer to be playing volleyball on the beach.)

As Mathew mentioned in a previous blog post the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF-GRFP) is an amazing program that, “Recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based Master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions.” [1] I have a bit of experience with the Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF) application, having applied to the NSF-GRFP twice, and am currently supported by the NSF-GRFP. Thus, since the deadline for this is fast approaching I figured I’d share a bit of advice regarding the application process. I should say that I am by no means an expert on the NSF-GRFP, and so all of this advice should be taken with a, possibly large, grain of salt.

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