UNDERGRADUATE MATH SEMINAR

Road Trips - Sign-up Now!

In this week’s seminar, the Union College Math Department’s Professor Kim Plofker will present the following talk. Wheels and Thunderbolts:

Second Order Indeterminate Equations in Medieval Indian Mathematics

ABSTRACT: Finding solutions for a single equation in two unknowns (for example, values of x and y that satisfy x2 - y2 = 1) is part of the mathematical field known as indeterminate analysis, where there are many possible solutions to a given problem. This was a popular subject in classical mathematics, later re-visited and expanded starting in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. In the meantime, though, mathematicians in medieval India took up these problems and developed a number of ingenious solution strategies for them. We'll explore how these problems and solutions evolved and what they tell us about the mathematical thinking of their day.    

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Department of Mathematics March 30, 2012

Bookmark it! The seminar schedule, abstracts, and (sometimes) slides presented by a speaker can be found http://www.math.union.edu/activities/seminars/student/welcome.html. The first seminar of the spring term will be DATE: TUESDAY, April 4th Time & 3:45pm – Refreshments in Bailey 204 Location: 4:00pm – Seminar in Bailey 207

This month there will be two math road trips, one during Week 3 to Skidmore College, and another at the end of Week 4 to attend the Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (HRUMC) at Western New England University.

1. On Thursday April 12, Skidmore College will host a lecture sponsored by the Skidmore-Union Network (SUN) by Professor Renee Fister from Murray State University. Instead of having our usual undergraduate math seminar that week, we are organizing transportation for any students interested in attending the talk. The talk will be 6:00-7:00 PM, and the shuttle will leave from Union at 5:00 PM sharp. One the way back to Union College we will stop for pizza. Please contact Professor Christina Tonnesen-Friedman (tonnesec@union.edu) by Monday April 9, if you are interested in joining us on a mathematical road trip.

2. The 19th annual Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (HRUMC) will be Saturday, April 21 at Western New England University, MA. The HRUMC is a one-day mathematics conference held annually each spring, attended by students and faculty from colleges and universities throughout New York and New England. It was founded by four colleges, Siena, Skidmore, Union, and Williams, with the goal of providing undergraduates with the experience of attending and/or presenting at a

Problem of the Newsletter: March 30, 2012 This week’s problem: Let f(x)=xe2x. Let f(n) be the nth derivative of f. Show that f(n)=ane2x+bnxe2x for some numbers an and bn. Find, with proof, formulas for an and bn. Professor Friedman will accept solutions to this problem until noon Thursday, April 5th. Email your solution to him (friedmap@union.edu) or put it in his mailbox in the Math Department’s office.

professional mathematics meeting, and was designed primarily with the student in mind. It is the premier regional undergraduate mathematics conference after which several others have been subsequently modeled nationwide. The conference features short, 15-minute talks primarily by students and faculty, as well as a longer invited address by a noted mathematician. This year four Union students, Zhu Chen ‘14, Daniel Roginski ‘12, Katie Schuff ’12, and Wei Yu ’13, will be speaking. The keynote address this year will be delivered by Ravii Vakil from Stanford University. His talk is entitled “The Mathematics of Doodling.” Interested in attending HRUMC? Sign-up by Wednesday, April 18th by emailing Professor Bill Zwicker (zwickerw@union.edu). The math department will arrange carpooling for all of the interested Union participants.

The Calculus Help Center is open Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday 7:30-10:00 pm in Sorum House

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