The Spring issue of our department newsletter is up! Which is good, because spring ends pretty soon, so we really were working against a deadline. [Fortunately, Batman and I are the editors so if we do miss a deadline, nothing actually happens.] Most of the information is local to our college, but there”s some information about summer research programs and conferences, and a bit of advice from folk in the financial world during Career Night. We change the name of the newsletter each quarter (harkening back to its start three years ago when we couldn’t figure out a name), and this issue is called The Wiley Wiles after, of course, Andrew Wiles. The best part of naming a newsletter after him is that we could include a picture of our former Chair’s program from the 1996 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Orlando, which Andrew Wiles kindly signed:
Pretty cool, huh?
In case you’d like to do some math this weekend, here are the Problems from the newsletter. Answers are welcome in the comments!
Problem 3.3.1: What are the next two numbers in the sequence 1, 8, 72, 46,
512, 612, …?
Problem 3.3.2: Choose a positive real number x and compute 100x2, x3, and 1.05x, then arrange the three results from least to greatest. How many orders are possible?
Problem 3.3.3: Express |x| in terms of the maximum function, and express max(x,y) as an absolute value.
Problem 3.3.4: What is the area of the largest semicircle that can be inscribed in a unit square?
360 
June 20, 2009 at 1:32 am |
3.3.1 Answer: 343
June 20, 2009 at 11:24 am |
The fifth number in 3.3.1 should be 521, right?
June 20, 2009 at 1:43 pm |
Yes, it should be 521. That’s my mistake. Oops.