Throwback Fact: Gauss's Birthday

Carl Friedrich Gauss

On this day in 1777, Carl Friedrich Gauss was born. The Prince of Mathematics was an important part of our Math Madness competition, and made it to the Final Four round. But in his short bio on our webpage, we missed some facts about Gauss that make his life even more interesting and impressive.

The great mathematician would have been 238 years old today, but there was a time that he did not know the date of his birth. Gauss was born to poor, working-class parents, and his mother was not quite literate. She did not record the date of Gauss's birth. Years later, she could just recall that Gauss was born on a Wednesday, and it was 8 days before Ascension Day, which lies on the calendar 40 days after Easter Sunday.

8 Vacation Destinations for the Mathematician

It’s been a long, hard Winter for the Center of Math. From record snowfall totals to Spring days that just can’t make it to feeling “warm,” we’ve got cabin fever and we’re craving Summer. So we put together this list of our top eight vacation destinations for mathematicians.

Westminster Abbey

London, England: If you’re in the UK, you know there’s a lot of math history around you. We suggest a visit to Westminster Abbey, where you can see the final resting place of Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest mathematicians and scientists of all time. If you’re able to venture a bit outside of the city, go to visit Bletchley Park. This museum is located at the site of the Government Code and Cypher School where Allied forces worked to decipher military codes of the German, Japanese, and other Axis nations. The codebreakers working here, including Alan Turing, created the technology that made modern computers possible.

Problem of the Week

That weekend was too short, wasn't it? But anyways, we're back at the Center with a new Problem of the Week. I've been feeling logic problems more and more since Cheryl's Birthday a few weeks ago. I particularly like the problems that lean more mathematical. The problem below, which I posted on our Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ accounts, looks so short and simple compared to some past problems of the week. But looks can be decieving! I found this problem on this Reddit comment. The user posted a quick solution in a follow-up comment,but I've expanded it and made it more detailed below.

Click on any picture to expand!

This problem can be solved using simple mathematics. In theory, a young high schooler has all of the math skills required to solve the problem, but it requires a few very logical steps. Here's my solution:

Math Minds: Scott Kelley

Last weekend, the Center of Math team went to the NCTM conference held in Boston. At the conference, we met hundreds of math teachers from the United States and abroad (the first person to stop by our booth was visiting from Perth, Australia!), and one of our interns, Zach, jumped at the opportunity to interview a few of the visitors. 

Here's his interview with Scott Kelley, a math instructor at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Read on to find out about how the blind "see" math problems, how his students use technology, and what simple advice Mr. Kelley offers to all students...

Zach talking math with Scott Kelley at NCTM

Throwback Fact: The AMS

An image from our Instagram, when the Center
attended JMM (by the AMS) in January

Friday, April 24th (misaligned slightly from our Throwback Thursday) marks the 118th anniversary of the first sectional meeting of the American Mathematical Society in 1897. Founded nine years previously in 1888, the AMS was the result of Thomas Fiske's vision to create a version of the London Mathematical Society in his home country. Soon after being founded, the AMS began to publish a research journal periodically.

Today, the AMS has nearly 30,000 individual members across the country, with physical locations in Providence, Rhode Island, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Washington, D.C. And the AMS works today, like in the earliest days of the society, to publish math content- they've upped their postings from one research journal to 8(!), plus 4 translations journals, and two open source journals. The AMS is a wealth of mathematical knowledge.

The AMS works each year with the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) to put on the annual Joint Mathematics Meeting. In fact, the Center of Mathematics regularly attends- we were at JMM San Antonio this past January!

To read more about the American Mathematical Society, click here or visit their webpage.

Math and the Earth (and a Giveaway!)

Math intern Tori and two friends in Center of Math wristbands out in nature.
Find out how to get your own at the bottom of the post!

In the Center of Math's 100^th blog post, let's talk about Monther Earth. 

Math and nature go together. Despite the math quote of the week that we posted last Sunday, I think that math is not a construct of the human mind- it’s always existed and it always will. This is evidenced all over. Sunflower seeds are arranged on the flower in a golden spiral, the ratio between your forearm and hand is the Golden Ratio, objects fall to Earth at (ignoring air resistance) an exponential rate, and the fractal patterns found on Romanesco broccoli (pictured below with a sunflower) are mesmerizing. In fact, the universe may even be made of math.