Welcome to the second edition of the Bates College Mathematics Department Newsletter!

This year's Mount David Summit was held March 30. Click on any photo below to see a larger version.

		The atrium at Pettengill: presenters explain their posters
		Jake White presents his poster; Judith Isaacson and advisor Bonnie Shulman visit
		Mark Prelli and advisor Chip Ross by Mark's presentation, both poster and laptop
		Sarah Cremer at her poster; Jill Reich visits
		Jason Touhey presents his poster and holds a math book

I'm pleased to be starting in the newly-created position of Assistant in Instruction in Mathematics. The job is a fluid one that will develop over time, but some of the things I'll be doing include working with students taking calculus and linear algebra and with seniors writing theses, and providing support and instruction in the mathematical software and technology that are available in the Department. I'm looking forward to meeting those of you I don't yet know and to seeing past students again.

Several seniors completed, or will complete, thesis projects this year. These include:

• Sarah Cremer, two-semester thesis: "Intersection Dichotomy: Q and P Curve Interaction in the Bifurcation Diagram"
• Steve Feiss, one-semester thesis: "Tessellations on the Hyperboloid"
• Peter Kozak, two-semester honors thesis, joint with Economics: "Valuation of Risky Fixed-Rate Debt and Credit Default Swaps"
• Mark Prelli, one-semester thesis: "Algorithms for the Computer Representation of Julia Sets"
• Jake White, one-semester thesis: "Period Doubling Bifurcations of a Periodically Forced Biological Oscillator"

Several Bates students went to conferences this year:

• Mike Lopez and Jake White presented papers at the Fall 2002 Northeast Section of Mathematical Association of America (NEMAA) meeting, November 22-23, at Framingham State College in Framingham, MA. Mike's paper, "The Babylonians Had It First" focussed on floating point arithmetic in the Babylonian number system (based on a project in Numerical Analysis) and Jake's paper was based on his thesis work: "Period Doubling Bifurcations of a Periodically Forced Biological Oscillator."
• Erica Dodd and Chi Nguyen attended the Fifth Annual Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics, February 7-9, 2003.
• Luciska Tiererova and Chrissy Anderson will present papers at the 10^th Annual Hudson River Undergraduate Math Conference (HRUMC). on April 12 at Union College. Luciska will talk about cooperative strategies in stickleback fish, based on work she did in Mathematics and War, the first year seminar taught by Bonnie, and Chrissy will talk about codebreaking in WWII, also from a project she did in that class.

The following photos come from the NEMAA conference in Framingham. Click on any photo to see a larger image.

Going to Budapest!

• Greg Jukins: I will be in Budapest next fall semester with Oliver (Gjoneski). As far as courses, we have a chance to attend each class for the first few weeks so that we can figure out which exact ones we want to take. If I had to choose now, I am leaning towards combinatorics and graph theory since these topics are new to me and are offered not so often at Bates. Other than that, Oliver and I are just really looking forward to living in Budapest.
• Chi Nguyen: I am applying to go to Salamanca in Spain next Fall semester. I am minoring in Spanish so probably the courses I am going to take are Spanish history and literature. So it's likely that I am going to miss math for a semester :)
  I am applying for a couple of internships in the business field. But I am also interested in building math models in economics.
• Mark Prelli: On summer jobs: No takers yet . . . maybe a summer camp with computers though.
  On life after Bates: I will probably be going on to teach math to high school students, as well as computer science and hopefully philosophy. I've applied to a program at UCONN where you get your teaching certificate and your masters' in a year and a half. I also have put in applications at Lincoln labs and Fidelity for programming jobs.
  Advice to up-and-coming math majors: Do a thesis if you can - they don't have to be harder than seminars, and they can become one of the most interesting classes you have here. It is a 1 on 1 class directed by you - and you won't find an opportunity like that very often in life.
• Nick Violi: For fall semester I've accepted an internship at Arcosanti in Mayer, Arizona, which is an architectural/ecological commune where they are building a city as a prototype to demonstrate the type of self-contained and self-sufficient architecture advocated by their founder, Paolo Soleri. I will be doing work on their computers, i.e. web servers, email servers, internet connectivity, local area networking. Should be a good time. I should be back second semester.

Fall Semester: We shared a spaghetti dinner and watched A Beautiful Mind.
Winter Semester: A group went to see the play Proof at The Public Theater in Lewiston.

Two mathematicians give a total of three talks about their research this semester:

Grynkiewicz, David J.
On four colored sets with nondecreasing diameter and the Erdös-Ginzburg-Ziv theorem.
J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 100 (2002), no. 1, 44--60