Ithaca College

A total of 140 students and 15 teachers from 10 regional high schools attended the 11th annual Ithaca College Math Exploration Day on April 13, 2015.

While teachers attended a presentation on  Arithmetic Progression and Figurate Numbers by Prof. Osman Yurekli, a majority of the students engaged in a team mathematics competition.  (Thanks to math faculty Marty Sternstein for writing and Aaron Weinberg for evaluating.)  Other students attended "Playing Games on Unusual Surfaces" - a math computer exploration led by Prof. David Brown, or "Math Problem Solving in Board Games" - an interactive session led by IC alum April Leithner, Program Director at Ithaca Family Math. 

Following the competition, all students and teachers had the opportunity to explore mathematics in a more hands on way.  Short sessions on Constructing a Hyper-Cube, Sudoku, Playing with Polyhedra, The Sound of Fibonacci: Connecting Pi, Phi and I, Mathematical Puzzles, Flexagons, How to Color the Mobius Strip, Turtle Recursion, and Card Shuffling: 1093, 3511, what’s next? were led by current and retired faculty Kelly Delp, Ted Galanthay, Dani Novak, Pam Pospisil, John Rosenthal, Stan Seltzer, and Matt Thomas and two current IC students, Erin Jolley and Angela Peng.  Angela's undergraduate research also yielded the design for this year's Math Day tee-shirt.  More information about this year and past events can be found at www.ithaca.edu/hs/depts/math/studentinfo/hsmathday/

Math Exploration Day has received national attention and was featured the the December 2014/Januray 2015 issue of MAA Focus, Newsletter of the Mathematical Association of America, Vol. 34, No. 6, pages 22-25.  The picture (page 22 and at right) is from Kelly Delp's session on balloon polyhedra from Math Exploration Day, 2014.  digitaleditions.walsworthprintgroup.com/publication/