Thursday, March 15, 2007

Happy day after Pi Day!

Hey, All!

Yesterday was the 301st Anniversary of the naming of π (celebrated), and the Math Club event I helped to put together went off splendidly. Over 50 people (mostly my Number Theory class combined with Quidnunc's Linear Algebra class, and a few assorted hangers-on) gathered to watch 6 folks compete in the pie-eating contest and 2 in the π-reciting event. Bocephus finished off about 90%-by-volume of his pie in 3 minutes and 14 seconds, giving him the victory in the first activity, and Ulrich recited 64 places after the decimal to garner the win in the second.

Many photos to come soon.

Meanwhile, my classes are chugging along nicely (I don't think anyone was too distraught over classes being cancelled on Friday). In Calculus we're almost done with shortcut rules, in 280 we're set to talk about relations and functions, and in Number Theory we're headed back to the text to talk about more on congruence arithmetic for a little while before tackling a couple of primality testing algorithms. The first of my Senior Seminar students' presentations comes next week, too, as Beulah will speak about hyperbolic geometry and how it inspired M.C. Escher. She's shown me her slides, and she did a great job in putting them together. If she can work out the timing, I think it'll be a fantastic talk.

Now, I've gotta hit the road to Georgia, hoping to make it to Statesboro in time for this afternoon's Project NExT-Southeast events. Tomorrow morning brings our panel on PBL/IBL. I'm looking forward to that, and I hope we get more than the 9 pre-registered participants.

2 comments:

Miss Maggie said...

"Happy (Day After"? Is this some math-speak that I don't get? Or is it because you posted this at 6 am?

Anonymous said...

Will you change your profile picture to one of you with blue hair? Thanks.