Math in a Minute

Hello everyone, Jacob here! If you've been following the Center's videos for the past few months, you might have noticed that I like to say a whole lot of things about any given topic, and that makes my videos go on pretty long. So, with me on the way out and the next math co-op coming in soon,  I decided to challenge myself to do the opposite: in this new mini-series, you'll see me tackle some classic but nontrivial problems from all different branches of mathematics, each in a single video whose duration is sixty seconds or less. Keep reading to watch Math in a Minute!

HyperRogue and hyperbolic geometry

One mathematical field that I find particularly interesting and beautiful is hyperbolic geometry: it's the same as Euclidean geometry, but takes the axiom that for any line and any point outside of that line, there's more than one line passing through that point which doesn't intersect the given line. In the past, hyperbolic geometry has featured heavily in the works of mathematically inclined artists like M.C. Escher.

Recently, over the past few years, independent developer ZenoRogue has created a video game that utilizes hyperbolic geometry, by the name of HyperRogue. The game is in the roguelike genre, but rather than using turn-based game evolution on a square or hexagonal grid, the game is based on the truncated order-7 triangular tiling of the hyperbolic plane, often called the "hyperbolic soccer ball," which is what gives it all sorts of interesting non-Euclidean properties. Keep reading to watch a Center of Math original video of HyperRogue gameplay, along with commentary about how the mathematical properties of hyperbolic space affect the game.

Holiday Math: Secret Santa

Around the holidays, one fun tradition is to set up an arrangement wherein members of a group anonymously trade gifts with one another, a process which is often called "Secret Santa." In this new video by the Center of Math, we mathematically investigate the odds that randomly assigning people around will create a valid exchange: it's a bit more complicated than you might think! Keep reading to watch it here.

Star Wars Video Special

Hey there! I bet you're all quite excited about today's release of Star Wars Episode VII: I know I am. To celebrate this great film series' revival, I've made a video where I apply a bit of science and mathematics to one of the iconic scenes of Episode IV. Keep reading to see what it is!

Video series: Group theory basics

The Worldwide Center of Mathematics is dedicated to more venues of mathematics education than just textbooks, and for this reason we've made a new video series, detailing some of the basics and interesting concepts in the mathematical field of group theory. Keep reading to learn more...

Video Series: So You Want To Learn LaTeX

Hello to all you mathematicians out there! We at the Center of Math have put together a video series where I, Jacob, explain the basics and useful features of the powerful open-source text and mathematics typesetting program LaTeX, widely used in academic writing, and which can make your papers for school, or documents for any purpose, look beautiful. In fact, all of the Worldwide Center of Mathematics' textbooks are typeset in LaTeX! Keep reading to find out more...

Mother's Day Special: Variation of the Simple Marriage Problem

One of my favorite things to do at the Center is create video content for fun math topics. The intern here before me did two "Holiday Specials" around Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I decided to continue his work! One of my first math videos was the Valentine's Day Special: Monty Hall problem. That one was a lot of fun.

This Sunday is Mother's Day (hi Mom!), so I took a math topic that I think is fun and themed it to fit the holiday. The Stable Marriage Problem is the famous mathematical scenario that we chose. Instead of a small village that has 10 women and 10 men who need to be paired in matrimony, we used mothers and the presents that their children picked out for Mother's Day.

Math Minds: David Massey

David Massey, a full professor of mathematics at Northeastern University and the founder of the Worldwide Center of Mathematics, sat down with our math intern Tori for an interview this week. He is the first in hopefully a string of mathematicians who will be interviewed for this new blog series.

David B. Massey, Ph.D

Are you currently involved in any research?

Yes - I study abstract notions of space in any number of dimensions. I prove things about what those spaces look like at places where they’re not smooth [singularities].

How do you picture those?

You don’t really. You picture what happens in low dimensions and hope that it gives you intuition for the higher dimensions. You can’t picture the higher dimensions, so you prove theorems that describe them. I’m interested in singularities because they’re a great blend of topology, commutative algebra, algebraic geometry… a lot of stuff.

The Center on College Admissions Exams

Here at the Worldwide Center of Mathematics, Tori, an intern working as the Assistant Director of Mathematical Content, has been hard at work creating new math resources and posts. She’s recently starred in several short videos that were made to help students study for the math section of the ACT (the next exam is February 7^th). Watch the playlist here! Tori is currently a math student at Northeastern University in Boston, and truly enjoys breaking down math problems into simpler, understandable pieces.

Here's one of Tori's first ACT videos

From a big-picture perspective, we want you, the students, parents, or teachers who watch these videos, to think of the Center of Mathematics as your main resource for math help. Our founder, David B. Massey, has given a multitude of lectures on his books and upper-level mathematics that are all available on our Youtube channel. We are not just a textbook publisher; we are a network of teachers and resources, and we are here to help students learn the intricacies of their mathematics courses.

A video from the second ACT shoot

We know that standardized, college-admission tests may seem daunting. They put a lot of pressure on the student, both in terms of time and emotion. They require quick recall of subjects learned all throughout high school. Our videos are meant to help train you to approach ACT or SAT math problems as simply as possible. Often you’ll see Tori use the same methods in several videos- that’s because she knows the techniques to simplify the problems. Math isn’t everyone’s favorite subject, but with Tori’s help (and the help of past and future interns), we can hopefully ease the burden and relax the stigma that is associated with mathematics on standardized tests.

If you have any questions or suggestions for future videos, let us know in the comments!

Center of Math YouTube Scavenger Hunt

May 15, 2014 - The winners of the first-ever Center of Math YouTube Scavenger Hunt have been drawn!

The first $50 Amazon Gift Card winner is Bailey G., who was the first to complete the challenge.

The two randomly drawn winners were David M. and Heather H.

92% of respondents correctly answered the final challenge problem.

Missed the hunt? The annotations have been removed so as not to disturb studying students. Here's a list of the clues and the final challenge problem.

• To start the hunt, take the blue pill or the red pill. Then multiply them.
• This rule is necessary to find the derivative of sin(x^2)
• An integral that forgot its manners
• How long was Noah’s Boat? 
• I’ve had it with these #$%& vectors on this #$%& plane!
• Please enter your password again to verify your identity
• Snoitcnuf Girt
• Before you continue, make sure your integration skills R squared away!
• The Center tweeted a link to this video on April 11th
• The angry piece of merchandise
• At Least you’ve made it this far, probably

A student has 5 heavy textbooks to carry around. The masses of each textbook in grams are 966, 340, 955, 1722, and 662. What is the average mass of this student’s textbooks?

___ Mass Ave.

Answer: 929


______________________________________

May 1, 2014

The Worldwide Center of Mathematics is sending you on a scavenger hunt. You'll solve math-related clues to reach a final challenge problem. Submit the correct answer at www.centerofmath.org/hunt for your chance to win a $50 Amazon Gift Card!

Our Trip To JMM14 In Numbers!!!

JMM 2014 - Baltimore Trip

The Center of Math traveled south from their headquarters in Cambridge, MA to attend the Joint Mathematics Meetings 2014 in Baltimore, MD.  The conference is the largest mathematics meeting in the world, attracting over 6,000 students, educators and more.  The Center of Math brought along a video camera and created a short video showing some of the numbers behind the trip.  Enjoy!

Worldwide Math Shorts

Brought to you by the Worldwide Center of Mathematics, Worldwide Math Shorts is a brand new collection of videos introducing important basic and foundational mathematics concepts. The videos are now available free on the Center of Math YouTube Channel.

Here at the Center, we are dedicated to providing 1) top-to-bottom coverage of the concepts you need to know and 2) the additional resources you’ll need to master them. Worldwide Math Shorts, featuring Tom Lewis (Northeastern University ‘15), was created to better serve the needs of math students, instructors and the greater community. The collection is comprised of six parts, including the basics of derivatives, integrals, matrices, probability, trigonometry, and vectors.

The topics were chosen to provide viewers with a better understanding of the early concepts essential to executing advanced calculus, differential equations, or linear algebra. Short and sweet, the videos are great for any aspiring mathematician, and serve as especially helpful “refreshers” for those using Center of Math textbooks. Each video introduces basic definitions and concepts followed by worked examples.

As we continue to expand our collection of study/help videos and resources, we want to hear from you! Which topics do you need help with? What kind of video or topic would you like to see the Center of Math produce next? Leave your comments or send your thoughts to info@centerofmath.org.

Center of Math Productions are recorded in the Center of Math Studio Classroom space in Cambridge, MA. The Center of Math was established to strengthen the math community by providing free and affordable resources for all. 

Check out one of our Worldwide Math Shorts below!