Welcome to the Bates College Mathematics Department Newsletter!

Our speaker, Jennifer Quinn, poses with several members of the math department (she is the one in the middle!)

A sizeable audience awaits the evening lecture

Professor Jennifer Quinn, of The Association for Women in Mathematics, packed the house - on a Friday night no less! - for this year's Sampson Lecture on November 10. The topic was "Fabulous Fibonacci Numbers" and local radio station WCNM, AM 1240 advertised the talk with this interview.

Jennifer also gave an afternoon talk titled "Synchronicity: Alternating Sums, Determinants, Continued Fractions & More".

At the stroke of noon on October 3, a set of math students and a group of instructors converged on Hathorn 104 for the College's first ever Mathematical Induction Ceremony. Though some might claim that such an event is derivative of similar gatherings held by fraternities and sororities, we hope that it will prove to be an integral part of the math major experience here at Bates.

Attendance was limited to math majors and those planning to declare themselves majors, and spirits were unbounded as we sampled a complex array of lunch treats. The success of the base case of this event leads us to conjecture that we can do it again and again, ad infinitum.

After the ceremony, all declared math majors received a gift in the form of a keychain with a domino and the words "Bates Math Induction" inscribed on it. This made many wonder about the significance of this present. Which of the following describes why the gift was chosen?

a) Math opens the keys to many doors.
b) Mathematical induction can be likened to a progression of infinitely many dominoes toppling over in order.
c) We need dominoes to help math majors to learn to count.
d) Both (a) and (b).
e) None of the above.

Answer at bottom of Newsletter.

Alex Salton gets ready for the poster session to start	Ben Clinton explains the code embedded in his poster border
Graham Enos draws a crowd to learn about cryptography	Laura Clarkson connects M.C. Escher and wallpaper groups

This semester saw four great posters (photos above) by fall one-semester thesis students. At the end of the poster session, we celebrated with pizza for all. Year-long thesis students gave presentations, and we look forward to more from them next semester! Their talk titles follow.

• On November 28, Abby Dalton talked about "A Look at Public Key Cryptography and Elliptic Curve Cryptosystems".
• On December 4, Steve Tyler gave the presentation "It's a Small World After All: Generating Small-World Networks to Understand Real World Phenomena".
• On December 5, Melissa Geddes explained "The Traveling Salesman Problem".

This year the Math Department has returned to its usual seminar series, after a year of specially focused Seminars on Computing in the Bates Math Curriculum. The Fall 2006 semester included talks by many of the newest members of the math faculty as well as enjoyable visitors.

Math Council again sponsored an Ice Cream Social to get math students together early this semester! On October 11, they treated us to many flavors of ice cream, along with toppings of both the candy and gooey varieties.

From the email introducing Math Council the newest bunch of Batesies:

"The student-run Math Council has, over the years, sponsored many events ranging from info meetings about thesis (always followed by pizza and soft drinks), movies and spaghetti dinners at Frye Street Union, to lectures for students by outside speakers. Last year one especially fun event was an end of the year dinner at Margaritas! We want to continue this tradition of fun social events involving both faculty and students, *BUT* we NEED your input and participation."

[Answer is d.]