MATH 492 - Undergraduate Seminar

Lecture syllabus
Textbook - PFB
Supplemental Textbook - MINI

Field trip talk

Announcements

• Score from the class will be avilable on Blackboard
• In case that your score on your list and in the system do not match, please let me know so I can correct the mistake.

Schedule

1. Aug 22 - Intorduction
   
   
2. Aug 29
   1. 2x Jacob Kottke and Amar Srivastava (PFB 1 - Six proofs of the infinity of primes)
   2. 2x Ali Vosburg and Nicholas Asjes (MINI 3 - The club of oddtowns)
   3. 2x Anna Bartels and Logan Briggs (PFB 39 - How to guard a museum)
   4. 2x John Sawatzky (PFB 21 - Fundamental theorem of algebra)
   
   
   
3. Sep 5 Labour day
   
   
4. Sep 12
   1. 2x Jesse Darlington and Emma Madsen (PFB 35 - Completing Latin Squares)
   2. 2x Matt Cleveland and Nick Wiges (PFB 4 - Representing numbers as sums of two squares)
   3. 2x John Brandon and Nathan Schwartz (PFB 3 - Binomial coefficients are almost never powers)
   4. 2x Avery Piraino and Tanner Boyle (PFB 43 - Of friends and politicians)
   
   
   
5. Sep 19
   1. 2x Wentao Song and Runpeng Li (PFB 20 - In praise of inequalities)
   2. Cody Schmudlach (PFB 22 - One square and an odd number of triangles)
   3. Chunley Yuan
   
   
   
6. Sep 26
   1. John Sawatzky - every finite division ring is a field
   2. John Sawatzky
   3. Alexandra Vosburgh - the math behind blackjack
   
   
   
7. Oct 3
   1. Nicholas Wiges (MINI 19 - The End of The Small Coins)
   2. Anna Bartels (PFB 38 - Five-coloring Plane
   3. Avery Piraino (Jarbik's/Prim's algorithm)
   4. Chunlei Yuan (PFB Pigeonhole Principle)
   
   
   
8. Oct 10
   1. Emma Madsen (The Mathematics of the Rubik’s Cube)
   2. Matthew Cleveland (PFB 26 - Buffon's Needle Problem)
   3. Logan Briggs
   4. Logan Briggs
   
   
   
9. Oct 17
   1. Jesse Darlington
   2. Jacob Kottke
   3. Rumpeng Li
   4. Wentao Song
   
   
   
10. Oct 24
    1. Nathan Schwartz
    2. Chunlei Yuan
    3. Chunlei Yuan
    4. Tanner Boyle - secret sharing and code theory
    
    
    
11. Oct 31
    1. John Brandon - missed :-(
    2. John Brandon - missed :-(
    3. Cody Schmudlach - The secret agent and and the umbrella
    4. Nicolas Asjes
    
    
    
12. Nov 7
    1. Jesse Darlington - German Tanks
    2. Nicolas Asjes - Kakea set
    3. Emma Madsen - Brouwer's fixed point theorem
    4. Natan Schwartz - Are these distances eclidean?
    
    
    
13. Nov 14
    1. Nicolas Wiges - MINI 20 Walking in the yard
    2. Matthew Cleveland -
    3. Avery Piraino - PFB 32- Cayley's formula for the number of trees
    4. Runpeng Li -
    
    
    
14. Nov 21 Thanks giving
    
    
15. Nov 28
    1. Jacob Kottke - Boxes and prisoners
    2. Amar Srivastava -
    3. Amar Srivastava -
    4. Wentao Song - Ceva's theorem
    
    
    
16. Dec 5
    1. Cody Schnudlach - MINI 15 only 2 distances
    2. Anna Bartels
    3. Alexandra Vosburgh - MINI 11 Checking matrix multiplication (using MINI 10)
    4. Tanner Boyle - RSA
    
    
    
17. Dec 14 (7:30am-9:30am) Final Exam - John Brandon

TIPS

• Simplify - nobody is interested in seeing a horrible long computation
• Do not oversimplify - don't be incorrect by oversimplifying
• Include motivation - why is the problem/result interesting? - include history - include context
• Do not overfill the slides - nobody will read them unless you want to scare/entertain us on purpose
• Practice!!!! talk out loud! - gives you better sense of time and see if you not too long or short - speed is greatly different if not talking out loud but just thinking what would you say - gives you more confidence - People giving TED talks practice even 50hours for 1 talk! - Really, practice it out loud. - Some transitioning between slides/parts of talk seem smooth when you think about it but become awkward when you speak out loud
• Do a spellcheck. - makes the presentation look sloppy
• Pictures are great!
• Be enthusiastic - it will make the audience pay attention
• On the last slide write "Thank you for your attention" - or something similar - it looks polite to me and it is clear the talk is over ;-) - it does not have to be the ONLY thing on the slide - last slide is what people will remember - make it nice
• Did I say practice out loud? - really helps a lot
• Tip for nervous people: - Recall that your job is not to present yourself but the thing you are talking about. Important is what people think about the topic you are explaining, not about you.