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Q: What is MATH 198: MATH Forum?
A: MATH Forum is a 0-credit course designed to provide experience in mathematical exposition and presentations for math majors/minors before they earn their degree in mathematics. Prerequisite for this course is MATH055 (Discrete Mathematics).
Q: What are the requirements for this course?
A: We would like you to
(virtually or in-person) attend four Mathematics colloquia or seminars in one semester,
write up a short summary of those talks (One paragraph is fine, but you should say something more than what was in the announcement for the talk), and
give one public mathematics talk of about 10 minutes in length on a mathematical topic chosen in consultation with your advisor.
The audience will be the math field group faculty and the other students in Math 198, and perhaps a few invited guests.
Guidelines for the talk are fairly simple: Find one mathematics paper with clear and substantial mathematics content that you believe you can communicate, and present it at the end of the semester!
Q: Where to find resources for papers and talks?
A: gotMath? listserv is a resource for weekly announcements about the Mathematics Colloquium, other math talks, math conferences, and other cool stuff related to mathematics for the Pitzer and Claremont community. If you want to be on the list, email Prof. Lorenat indicating that you want to be on the list. The list restarts every year, so you will need to respond even if you were on this list in the past.
You can find many accessible papers for undergraduates in publications such as
Math Horizons and
the Mathematical Monthly.
A few weeks before your talk, you will be asked to share your slides with us, so we can give you some feedback.
As far as the talks, you can find a list of upcoming mathematics events here:
https://researchseminars.org/ (Check undergraduate-appropriate ones!)
The Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics Colloquium: http://www.cshpm.org/
Q: What is the current temporary schedule for Fall 2025?
A: For Fall 2025, we will be following the schedule below:
10/17/2025 (First Zoom Meeting) General advice on how to structure a math talk & 1st sample talk
10/24/2025 (Second Zoom Meeting) 2nd sample talk (with some general info about best practices for the use of slides and LaTeX/beamer advice)
10/31/2025 (Third Zoom Meeting) 3rd interactive sample talk (with LaTeX/beamer templates)
TBA (Deadline) Titles/abstracts (due date for topic)
TBA (Deadline) First draft of slides due
TBA: Instructor (Feedback) meetings with students
Last Week of Classes: (90min Final In-Person Meeting) Student presentations
Q: What are some useful Beamer resources?
A: Here is some Beamer info helpful for starters:
Beamer User’s Guide:
Overleaf Beamer Templates:
Beamer Theme/Color/Font Gallery:
A useful tool that helps write the code out in LaTeX/Beamer by simply screenshooting an equation:
https://simpletex.net/ (Free)
https://mathpix.com (Free with limited number snippets)
More questions?
Send us (math field group) an email at math@pitzer.edu
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