Math at the Market

On October 19 OSU joined Celebration of Mind for the first time ever. Celebration of Mind is a yearly event in which people all around the world gets together to share their love for puzzles, games, math, and magic. It is also a commemoration of Martin Gardner’s legacy on his birthday (October 21).

But, who was Martin Gardner? He was an American popular science writer and pioneer of the field of Recreational Mathematics. For many years, he wrote a column, “Mathematical Games”, in Scientific American. He’s column brought mathematics to a big audience and captivated their minds. His monthly puzzle special compelled readers to try solving them, or else they had to wait a full month to know the answer. Gardner is an inspiration for us and many people who works on popularization of mathematics.

A young couple trying to solve the snake cube puzzleThis year, the Department of Mathematics, through the outreach initiative, participated in this great Celebration. Erika Roldan, the Director of Outreach, had an idea: what if we could bring math to the streets and put it side by side with what people nurtures from? So we went to Clintonville Farmer ‘s Market and “sold” math between apples and tamales, for free! What a better way of celebrating Gardner than bringing math to all people and mix it up with everyday life, like he did?

Our booth in the Market featured games and puzzles Gardner wrote about. We also had posters with challenges and puzzles to go.

At first, people looked at us with suspicion. More than one was probably wondering what was their worst nightmare doing at their favorite market. We offered pi and pentomino shaped organic cookies for those who solved a puzzle, and a few decided to give a try. Little by little more people approached our table. Some stopped, continued shopping and then came back. Once a puzzle was solved, people gained confidence and wanted to try another. Children were seriously engaged playing with math and their parents almost have to drag them away to continue with the shopping.

Then came the bubbles. You can always capture and audience when showing the amazing shapes soap film takes when sticking to the skeleton of a Platonic Solid. By the time the Market was about to end, people were asking if we were going to be there every Saturday.Erika showing a cubic bubble inside the skeleton of a cube

The purpose of the outreach initiative from the Department of Mathematics is to reach the general public of all ages and backgrounds. Events like this fulfill that purpose. When our events take place at a school, a science fair, or even here at OSU, attendees have to be interested enough to make the effort of coming. At the Market, we gave math to people who was not looking for it or even expecting it. We will continue to organize more of these activities to keep up with our mission.

A special thank you to the volunteers who were at the booth sharing their love for math: Maritza Sirvent, Yiwei Ren, KT Goldstein, and Rachel Skipper for baking cookies.

Girls Doing Math

The second session of Girls Exploring Math Monthly took place this last Saturday. This time the attendees explored latin and magic squares. They worked by themselves, challenged each other and naturally ended up working together to solve the problems.

A Latin square is an n by n grid filled with n different colors, each occurring exactly once in each row and exactly once in each column. When counting the number of different 3 by 3 Latin squares, Ella, a 7th grade student, said “If I fix the red, then there are only two possible ways of arranging the other two colors. Since there are 6 different configurations for the red, then there are 12 distinct colorings.”

During lunch, they had fun playing SET. They were competing against each other, but when the group of cards on play was a particularly difficult one, they joined forces. They came up with classification strategies that could help them better tackle the problem.

This event is part of a long term project that includes monthly workshops and a summer camp. The project Girls Exploring Math invites young women to experience mathematics through engaging activities in an nontraditional environment, and seeks to attract women to pursue careers in math.

BAMM @ the STEAM Factory

This Friday, Buckeye Aha! Math Moments joined STEAM Factory‘s Franklinton Friday for its October edition. Franklinton Friday is a monthly event in which 400 West Rich hosts a free art crawl, opening its doors to all public. STEAM Factory offers mini lectures on diverse research and outreach topics, as well as craft and activity tables to explore STEAM themes.

BAMM had a math games and puzzles table. General public and fellow STEAM members had fun solving the soma cube and playing Halloween SET, among other activities. A young attendee was trying to arrange the 12 pentominoes and a 2×2 square on a chess board. He couldn’t solve the puzzle that day, but said he hoped to would keep trying on the following Franklinton Friday.

Monica presenting a mini lecture about vampires and mathThis Franklinton Friday was Fear-hundred, a Halloween themed edition. Representing BAMM, Monica Delgado gave a mini lecture titled “How long would we go extinct if Dracula was real?”, in which she talked about some math models for vampire and zombie outbreaks. She presented a simple exponential model and concluded that, if no other factors were taken into account, vampires would very rapidly overcome humankind. She remarked that wouldn’t be very smart from vampires, as “after humankind is wiped out, vampires are doomed too, with no more blood to drink for survival”.

She concluded explaining how these models are suitable for educational purposes, and how they can be adapted for more realistic scenarios. “This also shows how flexible math modeling can be and how it can respond to a wide variety of biological challenges”, she finished saying.

This was the first of many future collaborations between BAMM and the STEAM Factory.