Q: What is MATH 198: MATH Forum?

A: MATH Forum is a 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.

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, and write up a short summary of each. One paragraph is fine, but you should say something more than what was in the announcement for the talk. 

In addition to attending talks, you will be required to 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: 

• Claremont Center for the Mathematics Sciences Colloquia: https://colleges.claremont.edu/ccms/

• 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 Spring 2024?

A: For Spring 2024, we will be following the schedule below:

• 3/4/2024 (First meeting) General Information

• 3/18/2024 (deadline) Titles/abstracts (due date for topic)

• 3/18/2024  (meeting) General advice on how to structure a math talk & 1st sample talk

• 3/25/2024  (meeting) 2nd sample talk (with some general info about best practices for the use of slides)

• 4/1/2024   (meeting)  3rd sample talk (with LaTeX/beamer advice)

• 4/15/2024 (deadline) First draft of slides due

• Week of 4/22-4/26: Instructor (feedback) meetings with students 

• 5/2/2024 (Final meeting) Student presentations 

Schedule will be added soon!

Q: What are some useful Beamer resources?

A: Here is some Beamer info helpful for starters:

Beamer User’s Guide:

• https://tug.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/beamer/doc/beameruserguide.pdf

Overleaf Beamer Templates:

• https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Beamer 

• https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/tagged/beamer 

Beamer Theme/Color/Font Gallery:

• https://deic.uab.cat/~iblanes/beamer_gallery/ 

• https://latex-beamer.com/tutorials/beamer-themes/ 

• https://hartwork.org/beamer-theme-matrix/

More questions? 

Send us (math field group) an email at math@pitzer.edu