Next Meeting:

Thursday March 26th

Location: BH 330

Time: 11:30 AM - 12:15 PM

Title: Why I love Monovariants: From Zombies to Conway's Soldiers via the Golden Mean 

Speaker: Dr. Steven J. Miller, President, Fibonacci Association  

Abstract: A monovariant is a quantity which is either non-increasing or non-decreasing (such as the number of primes up to x or the volume of a sphere of radius r, but not the number of factors of n). Amazingly, many challenging problems can easily be solved by associating the right monovariant to it; unfortunately it is often challenging to `see' the right quantity to study. We'll explore three interesting cases: understanding the growth of the Zombie apocalypse, the famous Conway checker problem, and Zeckendorf's Theorem that every integer can be written uniquely as a sum of non-adjacent Fibonacci numbers (if we define them by F_{n+1} = F_n + F_{n-1} with F_1 = 1, F_2 = 2). If time permits we will discuss a game I created based on the Fibonacci problem, with a $500 reward for a solution! 

Pizza and beverages will be provided.

All majors and backgrounds welcome!

Come learn & have lots of fun!

Check out our calendar for a complete list of upcoming events.