On behalf of the Fields Undergraduate Network (F.U.N.) we invite undergraduates to participate in the F.U.N. Kids Choose Math Video Contest.

Background:

As an undergraduate student, do you remember when you were first inspired by the fascinating field of mathematics?  Would you like an opportunity to be that first inspiration for another?  The video contest is your chance to expand someone else’s mathematical universe.

This contest is an initiative developed to help inspire interest in learning mathematics and encourage mathematical ways of thinking by creating short and entertaining videos.

This initiative is made possible by faculty advisers to F.U.N. and sponsorship from the Fields Institute, the Canadian Mathematics Society, and Virtual Researchers on Call (http://vroc.ca).

Details:

We want you to produce a five-minute video about mathematics for a target audience of Canadian kids in grades 5, 6, 7 and 8.  The deadline for your video submissions is May 16, 2012 @ 04:00 GMT.

Your videos will then be made available for streaming on the “Kids Choose Math Video Contest” website. The kids will then rate these videos through this website.

The video with the highest rating will be declared the winner and your club/society/organization will be awarded a prize of at least $1000 to host a F.U.N. event at your location.

More Information:

For more information, and to register to participate, please visit our website at http://fun.fields.utoronto.ca

 As S. Gudder said “The essence of mathematics is not to make simple things complicated, but to make complicated things simple.”

Join us in enriching the intellect of the next generation of mathematicians and redefining what it means to love math.

Closing date for receipt of applications is Wednesday, December 14, 2011.

Applications are invited for Research Assistantships in all areas of combinatorics, optimization, and cryptography, including algebraic combinatorics, quantum computing, coding theory, graph theory, operations research, etc.

The Department is very active in research, with supervision available in all areas. Applicants do not need to specify a particular area of interest, nor have a specialized background in combinatorics and optimization. The program has been very successful in past summers, with some students co-authoring research papers and many proceeding to graduate school.

(More details can be found on the Department’s web page, http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/CandO_Dept/SummerResearch/Summer.shtml ) This year’s program will again run in co-operation with NSERC’s Undergraduate Student Research Award program.

These awards will be for three or four months during May – August, 2011. Salaries will be at least $2,500 per month, depending on circumstances. Students from other universities may be eligible for reimbursement of return travel costs.

There are normally up to 12 awards available, depending on the number of qualified applicants.

Interested individuals should send a cover letter, resume, a recent grade report, and names and email addresses of two references to:

Prof. A. Menezes, Chair

Department of Combinatorics and Optimization

Faculty of Mathematics

University of Waterloo

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

N2L 3G1

Email: combopt@math.uwaterloo.ca

Phone: (519) 888-4567, ext. 33482

Fax: (519) 725-5441

Applying by email is acceptable. Any attachment should be a pdf file. Closing date for receipt of applications is Wednesday, December 14, 2011.

Poster Made by Richard Cerezo

As part of the CMS Student Committee’s initiative to coordinate with FUN, we are hosting an event as part of the CMS Studc Fields Trip. We are planning a few morning activities while the CMS Studc is putting together the afternoon activities.

The morning session includes a short meet and greet with Professor Fraser and some of the other student attendants of the larger CMS Winter Meeting. Following this will be a short recap on all the events up to date held by FUN as well as some announcements of future directions.

Professor Fraser readily agreed to give a talk and answer questions about his talk on the History of Complex Analysis. Please review the abstract and consider the following references,

Helena Pycior, Symbols, Impossible Numbers, and Geometric Entanglements British Algebra
Through the Commentaries on Newton’s Universal Arithmetik (1997)

Ivo Schneider, “Der Mathematiker Abraham de Moivre (1667–1754)”, Archive for History of
Exact Sciences 5 (1968), pp. 177-317.

Hope to see you there!

-RJC

Poster by Andrea Yeomans

Brigitte Stepanov, a mathematics student of Queen’s University, has put together a great event for the Fields Undergraduate Network.

She has invited three of Queen’s algebraic geometers, Mike Roth, Anthony Geramita, and Gregory Smith to give this set of specialized talks for undegraduates.

We hope to see you there and also that you would join us for dinner during the evening of the conference. If you choose to attend the dinner, please send an email to 8bns@queensu.ca

Please see below for the abstracts of the talks.

Algebraic Geometry as provider of insight
Mike Roth, Queen’s University

Abstract: One of the most appealing features of algebraic geometry is the way in which translating an algebraic problem to a geometric one can illuminate it, revealing aspects invisible from the point of view of equations. As a sample we will consider the problem of trying to find polynomial solutions to a single equation and see how the underlying geometry of the complex solutions completely resolves this algebraic question.

Sums of Squares:  Evolution of an Idea

Anthony V. Geramita, Queen’s University and the University of Genoa

Abstract: Questions about sums of squares of integers were considered in Number Theory by Gauss, Lagrange, Fermat and others. I will show, in this talk, how these considerations in Number Theory evolved into a wonderful question in Geometry, particularly in Algebraic Geometry.  Furthermore, that question still has aspects of it that are open problems which can be considered by undergraduates.

Polynomial Equations and Convex Polytopes

Gregory G. Smith, Queen’s University

Abstract: How many complex solutions should a system of n polynomial equations in n variables have?  When n = 1, the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra bounds the number of solutions by the degree of the polynomial.  In this talk, we will discuss generalizations for larger n.  We will focus on some of especially attractive bounds which depend only on the combinatorial structure (i.e. the associated Newton polytopes) of the polynomials.

-RJC