6 Must-see Summer Attractions for Math Lovers

     With memorial day marking the unofficial start to summer, the Center of Math wanted to give you a list of 6 must-see summer attractions for all you mathematicians and math lovers out there!

United States Attractions

1. National Museum of Mathematics

Museum Website

Twitter: @MoMath1

    The National Museum of Mathematics is a great place for any math lover to visit. Located in New York City, the museum features a number of interactive exhibits, a gallery of mathematical structures, pictures and art, as well as programs that explore the wonders of mathematics. This is the place to be for anyone who wants to spend a day of fun, immersed in a world of mathematics. 

2. MIT Museum

Museum Website

Twitter: @MITMuseum

     Right in our backyard (Cambridge, MA), MIT is a center of math and sciences. The MIT museum is meant to engage and inspire visitors about the possibilities and opportunities science and technology have to offer. The museum features interactive exhibits, public programs, and its own world-renown collections. Any math lover should visit the museum and see one of the most influential mathematical places in the world.

3. The Tech Museum of Innovation

Museum Website

Twitter: @TheTechMuseum

     Located in San Jose, in the the heart of Silicon Valley, the Tech Museum of Innovation is a great place for any math lover to visit. The museum features many different programs and exhibits designed around tech innovation. One such exhibit involves designing and building your own robot! This is a great place to see what the latest innovations in technology are, all involving math of some kind.

Non-U.S. Attractions

4. Stonehenge

     While it is a popular tourist destination, Stonehenge should not be avoided, as it is an amazing and mysterious structure. The placement and alignment of Stonehenge was not random. It is based on math, specifically the field of geometry. Stonehenge incorporates the relationships between squares and circles. For a detailed explanation of the math behind it, visit http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/gem-projects/hm/0102-1-stonehenge/mathematical_relations.htm. So not only is Stonehenge a great place to visit for the view, it is also home to math used thousands of years ago, something any math lover can appreciate!

5. University of Göttingen

University Website

     The University of Göttingen is a famous university in Germany. It was home to many famous mathematicians and physicists over the years. Some of the more notable ones are Carl Friedrich Gauss, Bernhard Riemann, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Max Planck. This is a great place to visit if you are into math history and wish to see the place where many notable discoveries and achievements occurred. 

6. Sagrada Familia Cathedral

Sagrada Website

     The Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona is not only a great place for tourists and architecture lovers, but it is a site any math lover should visit. Designed by Antoni Gaudí, the cathedral features many mathematical structures. There are hyperbolic paraboloid structures throughout, as well as catenary arches, a type of geometric curve. Gaudí also incorporated a magic square into the structure, an arrangement of numbers that add up to the same amount down, across and diagonal.

Upcoming Events

     In the upcoming weeks, there are a number of interesting edtech, mathematical, and STEM conferences and events taking place. We have put together a list so that you can keep up with the events and see the latest happenings in the math and education world!

NISOD 2014

NISOD’s International Conference on Teaching and Leadership Excellence attracts educators from around the world and is the definitive gathering of community and technical college faculty, administrators, and staff seeking to engage in deep conversations about best and promising practices designed to improve student achievement.

     NISOD 2014, which takes place in Austin, Texas this year, is the place to be for community and technical college faculty who wish to promote practices to improve academic success for students. The conference will feature an exhibit hall with a variety of exhibits, as well as daily sessions and lectures given by motivating national speakers. Want to keep up with the event on twitter? The official hashtag is: #NISOD2014, @NISOD.

Conference Website

Canadian Mathematical Society 2014 Summer Meeting

The Canadian Mathematical Society promotes the advancement, discovery, learning and application of mathematics in Canada.

     The Canadian Mathematical Society is hosting their annual summer meeting in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The conference will have sessions on a variety of mathematical subjects hosted by faculty from Canadian and U.S universities. Students will be able to attend a variety of workshops and events specifically for students. Finally, there will be an exhibit hall featuring companies and textbook publishers. The official twitter handle for the CMS is: @canmathsociety.

Conference Website

State of the Union EdTech

Thursday May 29th, 2014. Cambridge, MA

     LearnLaunch is hosting a conference right in our backyard, Cambridge, MA. A panel of education innovators will lead a discussion on how technology is being integrated into education, what those products are, and any problems that prevent them from furthering student academic achievement. The official hashtag is: #StateOfEd14.

Event Webpage

Bridging the Workforce Gap: In-Demand STEM Occupations in the Metro North Region

Friday May 30th, 2014. Cambridge, MA

     The Metro North Regional Employment Board (REB) is hosting an event in Cambridge to outline career paths in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). The focus will be on five career paths: Information Technology, Life Sciences, Healthcare, Advanced Manufacturing, and Engineering. The event is designed around people who wish to encourage youths to pursue STEM careers in the future.

Event Webpage

What's the Center (of Math)?

Got my #WhatsTheCenter swag today! Thanks @centerofmath What's your answer to http://t.co/uiuLHgXofd? pic.twitter.com/N4kiQfFtDH

— Michael Wilkinson (@mwilkinson3) March 28, 2014

NEMATYC 2014 Conference: On the Road with Math

NEMATYC 2014 Conference:  On the Road with Math
April 4th and 5th, 2014
Middlesex Community College, Lowell, MA

The Center of Math travels to the annual New England Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges

I had the privilege of traveling with the Worldwide Center of Mathematics to attend the annual NEMATYC conference hosted in Lowell, MA. Short for the New England Mathematical Association of Two Year Colleges, NEMATYC this year was located roughly a 45 minute drive from our location in Cambridge. We had a booth close to where the main meeting rooms were located, and we got to peddle our books to professors between lectures.

The conference was a fraction in size of the JMM conference I attended in Baltimore at the beginning of the year, but the traffic at our booth was surprisingly comparable. Nearly everyone I spoke to took a genuine interest in our company, and I was encouraged by how enthusiastic all the educators at NEMATYC seemed to be about teaching. We got plenty of requests for desk copies, and even spoke with a few people about their ideas for new textbooks.

As a student at a five-year university, I’m a little removed from the idea of a two-year college. Most of my thoughts on community college come from the show “Community”, about a group of aimless failures and drop-outs, so I was rather impressed by how practical and career-oriented everything appeared. In fact, I got a far stronger feeling that these schools were preparing students for a successful future, I would say, than most four-year universities offering degrees in basket-weaving and eighteenth-century French literature.

All this is to say I am encouraged by the opportunities two-year colleges open up for students, and I was pleased to see the way the people at NEMATYC were working to build such a strong mathematical foundation in their classrooms.  Because of my confidence in the quality of the Center of Math’s textbooks and math resources, I’m personally hoping we see more two-year colleges adopt our books in the near future.

If you'd like more information on the Worldwide Center of Mathematics or NEMATYC, please email me.

-tw