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Spring 2026 Schedule
Spring 2026 Schedule
Location: Hill Center for Mathematical Sciences, Room 705
Time: Thursday evenings, from 6:30 - 8:00 pm.
Thursday, February 12
Title: Mountain ranges, raging rapids, and dense forests
Speaker: Adam Earnst (PhD candidate, Rutgers University)
Description: For our first session of 2026, we're going to go on an adventure. We'll be climbing mountains, avoiding treacherous rivers, and navigating dense forests. As we go on our journey, we'll learn some math that will help us overcome the many obstacles in our way.
Thursday, February 26
Title: How Much Power Do Individual States Actually Have in Deciding Elections?
Speaker: Melissa Lieberman (Associate Teaching Professor, Rutgers University)
Description: US Elections as well as motions passed in the House are highly influenced by the number of electoral votes allotted to each state. While states with larger populations have more electoral votes, an interesting question comes up on how to actually measure the amount of power they yield. While we expect that the percent of power a state has in deciding an election is approximately proportional to the percent of population the state represents, it turns out this is not always the case. In this session, we will discuss mathematical ways to measure a state's power and how it gives us insights to how much power individual states have in deciding elections.
Thursday, March 12
Title: Exploring minimal surfaces through bubbles
Speaker: Ryan Mc Gowan (PhD student, Rutgers University)
Description: If I give you some object with annoying constraints to contend with, how can you make that object as small as possible? Problems like this are some of the hardest in mathematics. Surprisingly, one of the first big breakthroughs came not from complicated calculations, but from blowing bubbles and playing with soap film. Let's see how, this Thursday!
Thursday, March 26
Title: Economic explorations: Math behind markets
Speaker: Sue Bhuyan (Lecturer, Rutgers University)
Description: Let's explore the intersection of math and economics, unraveling the principles that govern supply, demand, equilibrium, and other economic concepts. We'll discover the dynamics of supply and demand, methods for calculating equilibrium, and the effects of shocks to market equilibrium. Come and examine the math that powers every market—from bubble tea and wireless earbuds to cars and streaming services. It’s part detective work, part strategy, and all about understanding how markets work.
Thursday, April 9
Speaker: Rasha Abadir (Assistant Teaching Professor, Rutgers University)
Description: Stay tuned for more details soon!
Thursday, April 23
Title: The Mathematics of Dancing
Speaker: Shadi Tahvildar-Zadeh (Professor, Rutgers University)
Description: Stay tuned for more details soon!
Fall 2025 Schedule
Fall 2025 Schedule
Location: Hill Center for Mathematical Sciences, Room 705
Time: Thursday evenings, from 6:30 - 8:00 pm.
Thursday, September 11
Title: Modular Origami
Speaker: Paul Ellis (Teaching Professor, Rutgers University)
Description: We will be working mostly with the Sonobe units. By folding a bunch of these units and fitting them together, we can construct some interesting shapes, including all the platonic solids. If time permits, we will also talk about why there are only five of these. I will bring plenty of other interesting origami models to share, in case we have more time.
Thursday, September 25
Title: An Exploration of Graph Theory
Speaker: Kristen Hendricks (Associate Professor, Rutgers University)
Description: Suppose you have five different cities, and you want a road connecting each pair of cities. Is it possible to do this without any intersecting roads? We'll learn how to answer questions like this using the field of graph theory!
Thursday, October 9
Title: 4D tic-tac-toe and SET
Speaker: Adam Earnst (PhD Student, Rutgers University)
Description: Tic-tac-toe is a game with a pretty simple strategy: once you've played many times, it's pretty hard to lose. Is tic-tac-toe in higher dimensions more interesting? We'll also learn the game of SET and explore some similarities between these games.
Thursday, October 23
Title: What is a number? - How to win games with math
Speaker: Riley Guyett (PhD Student, Rutgers University)
Description: We can probably tell when we are winning or losing a game like checkers, but is it possible to quantify by how much? In this talk we will explore the history of numbers and develop our own number system by playing games and breaking the rules.
Thursday, November 6
Title: How to Shuffle Like a Mathematician
Speaker: Michael Woodbury (Assistant Teaching Professor, Rutgers University)
Description: Suppose that your teacher has an important letter to give to you and each of your classmates in your cubbies at school (as in the picture to the right), but the letters ended up in the wrong cubbies. Your letter is supposed to be cubby 1, but it ended up cubby 3; the one that is supposed to be there is in cubby 4, etc.; everything is messed up! The goal is to rearrange the letters but to do it "like a mathematician as a shuffle": meaning, you can only interchange two letters at a time that are in neighboring cubbies. Can you do it? If so, is there only one way? What is the minimum number of shuffles needed? We'll explore these and related questions on Thursday night!
Thursday, November 20
Title: Mirror, Mirror: A random walk with a twist
Speaker: Lucy Martinez (PhD Candidate, Rutgers University)
Description: We are going to take a walk, but not just any walk. At each step, a coin flip will decide our direction. Imagine you have a fair coin: flip heads to take one step forward, and tails to take one step back. This simple random walk on a number line raises fun questions that we can explore using probability. Then, we will add a third possible step, and that is where the twist appears!
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