The Math Club
Coe has a very active Math Club, funded through the Student Senate
and driven by student interest. The Math Club generally organizes
at least one event per month through the academic year, with a
wide variety of activities. We've enjoyed surprisingly high participation,
with as many as 45 people turning up for speakers and more than
a dozen involved in winter break reading projects.
Some of the 2004-05 academic year's Math Club activities included...
- ... a speaker from Iowa State University talking about the
mathematics of designing high-speed trains.
- ...watching the movie Pi.
- ...going to Cold Stone Creamery, where we ate ice cream and
discussed the combinatorics of selecting toppings (well, okay,
mostly we ate ice cream and talked about other stuff).
- ...reading the classic book Flatland: A Romance of Many
Dimensions over winter break and discussing it when spring
term began.
- ...watching the premier episode of the television show Numb3rs
and discussing it afterwards.
- ...celebrating Pi day (March 14th – think about it)
with sidewalk chalkings and an afternoon gathering.
- ...a speaker from Aegon, one of the three largest insurance
firms in the world (with major offices in Cedar Rapids) about
careers in actuarial science and related fields.
So far in the 2005-06 academic year we've...
- ...gone to see the movie Proof when it hit theaters
in town.
- ...led activities on Möbius strips and bubble-making
for Coe's Playground of Science open house for schoolchildren
in the community.
- ...had a speaker on the mathematics of mazes and puzzles.
- ...read Taxicab Geometry: An Adventure in Non-Euclidean
Geometry over winter break, then gathered to discuss it
when spring term began.
- ...sponsored a talk by one of Coe's senior math majors about
her summer research (funded by the National Science Foundation)
and continued work on the subject, with an attendance of 27.
- ...gathered for our annual Pi day celebration, which this
year included a bizarre video and one of our students reciting
the first 405 digits of Pi from memory, with an attendance of
over 50.
- ...gone to see John Nash give a talk about his current research
(yes, the John Nash from the movie A Beautiful Mind).
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