Sonia Kovalevsky Math Day is a fun-filled day of mathematics with hands-on workshops and talks for middle and high school female students and their teachers, both women and men. Originally started and funded by the Association for Women in Mathematics, the purpose of the day is to encourage young women to continue their study of mathematics and to assist the teachers of female mathematics students.
Free and Fun! Continental Breakfast and Lunch will be provided.
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9:00 - 9:30 |
Continental Breakfast |
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9:30 - 9:45 |
A "Welcome" by the organizers, followed by a short biographical sketch of Sonia Kovalevsky |
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9:45 - 10:30 |
Workshop: The Number Games: Survival of the Brainiacs Abstract: What do paying your friend, filling your water bottle, and stopping a super villain have in common? Number theory! Many of the developments in modern mathematics came from games and puzzles of ancient times. In this workshop we will discover this exciting branch of mathematics by playing some real-life games. The topics we will cover are finding an algorithm to calculate the greatest common divisor of two numbers, modular arithmetic, and the Chinese Remainder Theorem. Graduate Leaders: Angie Babei and Sara Chari |
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10:35 - 11:20 |
Plenary Lecture: Knotty by Nature Ina Petkova, Assistant Professor, Dartmouth College |
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11:25 - 12:10 |
Workshop: The Fold-Cut Theorem Abstract: If you fold a piece of paper into quarters, you can cut a diamond out of the middle with just one cut. What other shapes can you make? How many cuts do they take? In this workshop, we will use folding to minimize the amount of cuts you need to cut out a shape. Starting with diamonds, triangles and squares, we will figure out what shapes you can cut out with only one cut. Graduate Leaders: Melanie Dennis and Kate Moore |
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12:10 - 1:10 |
Buffet Lunch
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1:10 - 1:55 |
Workshop: Tilings, Counting, and Symmetry Abstract: Imagine sitting in front of a chess board with a pile of dominoes. How many ways could you arrange the dominoes on the board so that every square was covered and no domino was hanging off the board? What if we changed the shape of our chess board, or replaced dominoes with a different shape? Given a board and a set of tiles, can we tell when such a covering is possible? In this workshop, we’ll explore a variety of puzzles like this, called tiling problems. Graduate Leaders: Emma Hartman and Lizzie Tripp |
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2:00 - 3:00 |
Panel Discussion: Why study Math? Undergraduate: Sophie Connor, Jade Yen Graduate: Xingru Chen, Sarah Manski, Pepper Huang Professor: Carolyn Gordon
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3:00 - 3:15 |
Closing and Evaluations
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