The Center and the Community

Zach from the Center of Math helps Juan from Boston Latin Academy load the books. 

Today, April 7^th 2015, the Worldwide Center of Mathematics completed a good deed, and helped over 170 students all over Boston get the tools they need to be the best students they can be. With some help from Esther Kan, a librarian at the Campbell Resource Center in Dorchester (a division of the Boston Public School system), employees at the Center helped give textbooks to high school students who needed them.

Because we’re so excited about this whole experience, we’re going to break down the specifics a bit more. The Center of Math had 25 copies of Introduction to Statistics, 36 copies of Worldwide Pre-Calculus, and nearly 125 (!) copies of AP Calculus to donate to various schools.

Boston Latin Academy received 80 copies of AP Calculus, Madison Park High School and East Boston High School split the 25 copies of Intro to Stats, English High School received 21 copies of AP Calc, and Brighton High received the last 25 copies of AP Calc. All of the schools will split the Pre-Calc books amongst themselves.

The lack of textbooks perfectly represents the inequality that is too prevalent in America’s public school systems, and is one of the main reasons that the education and income gap continue to grow in the U.S. One of the beliefs that motivates the employees at the Center of Math is the idea that education should be available to anyone who wants to learn. This idea is why our textbooks are so affordably priced, and this is why our YouTube channel is stocked with informative videos and lectures – if you want to learn, we are here to help.

We are thrilled to have played such an integral role in making so many students’ education easier, as well as lightening the stress-load that these teachers had been dealing with. We know that these students will use the books in good health and with good intentions. The idea that we may have sparked one student’s passion for mathematics is enough for us, but knowing that these kids now have the textbooks they need, well it is a great feeling and it has motivated us to try our hardest and do more good in the education world. 

Math Madness Results

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The Madness has ended!!

In the last Math Madness blog post, we released the winners of the Elite 8 matchups. Then we were down to the Final Four: Newton was up against Gauss, and Euler had to face Riemann. We set up a poll on Friday night and our voters decided: Newton won his match, and Euler his. So we entered the championship last night.

So the two mathematical giants faced off, and we set up a new poll on Monday night to ask our voters to help us decide the winner, the most significant mathematician of all time, and the result is...

Problem of the Week

Good morning from Cambridge! I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend- I spent mine cooking brunch. Now that everyone is back to work, take a short break and solve our Problem of the Week. Like usual, I posted a challenge problem to our Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ pages, and it can be found right here:

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A proof! This one doesn't look too tricky. I've uploaded my solution (hint: use modular numbers!), and it can be found below...

Math Madness: The Elite 8

As we whittle down our list of mathematicians, the choices get harder and harder. We published all of the results of the Sweet 16 (click the Math Madness label in the sidebar if you need to find an old post!) and we've got the Elite 8 results right here.

Match 1: Newton vs. Erdös

Check out these short bios for Newton and Erdös.

Both men were important, and both men had eccentric personalities according to biographies. Erdös was a self-proclaimed “solver” more than an innovator of mathematics. For this reason, we award this round to Newton, who created calculus, an entire branch in the tree of mathematics, as well as solving problems of his time. But, Newton will never have a good Erdös number!

Throwback Fact: President Garfield, Mathematician?

President James Garfield
image: commons.wikimedia.org

Several weeks ago, the Throwback Fact of the week focused on the Pythagorean Theorem. But did you know that the United States has a past president with a published work of mathematics? On April 1st, 1876 (yesterday in history!) James A. Garfield, a congressman at the time, published a unique proof of the Pythagorean Theorem in the New England Journal of Education. 

Math Madness: Round 1 Part 4

Here is the final update on the matches of our Sweet 16 in the Math Madness Bracket! Keep checking both the blog and the website for updates. One more blog post will show the results of our Elite Eight matches, and then voting will be open to all Center of Math readers to decide our Final Two and then the Champion!

Match 7: Hilbert vs. Poincaré

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Match 7  shows two mathematicians from the same era against each other: the German David Hilbert versus the French Henri Poincaré.

A mathematician who got his feet wet in many branches of mathematics, Poincaré has earned credit for the creation of generalized elliptic functions, the discovery of connections between automorphic functions in the same group, the Poincaré conjecture, and much more. Perhaps his most prestigious contribution was the solution of the three-body problem, which eluded mathematicians since Newton. Poincaré had a strange path to mathematics- he actually earned a degree in mining engineering, and became a mine inspector for several years. He was actually completing his thesis for a mathematics doctorate at the same time in the field of differential equations. In 1912, Poincaré died at the age of 58.