UW Mathematics Outreach

Two programs vie for top billing on the outreach front: Math Day and SIMUW. We’ll start with Math Day, which has been around much longer.

Math Day occurs on the Monday of the University’s spring break, when some 1,200 high school students from as near as Seattle and as far away as Moscow, Idaho come to campus for a day full of mathematics both in its own right and as it turns up in various sciences. The day always starts with a lecture by someone known for the sparkle as well as the content of their presentations. This year’s, for instance, was by a biometrician, Noble Hendrix, and bore the splendid title of “One Fish, Two Fish, False Fish, True Fish.” For the rest of the day, students have choices of many smaller sessions, including lectures ranging from “The Curvature of Surfaces” to “Why Dogs have Wet Noses and Other Mathematical Insights,” as well as activities from visiting a laboratory to making boomerangs. Meanwhile, their teachers, besides attending sessions, have a luncheon together, where they have lively conversations with each other and with UW faculty and students and even get to play some mathematics games of their own. All of this is managed annually by Professor Jim Morrow who maintains (somewhat implausibly!) that it is easy to do.

For SIMUW, otherwise known as the Summer Institute for Mathematics at the University of Washington, the age range of participants is similar, and the total student-days is not far different, but in this case we have not 1,200 students for one day but rather 24 students for six weeks. A further difference: while the underlying motivation for Math Day is to entice students who may not have thought about it into exploring mathematics and considering UW for college, the SIMUW students are most definitely already interested in mathematics. They are chosen by their solutions to a problem set posted on the department’s web site—problems that do not involve calculus, but do require some heavy-duty thinking. The program, which exists thanks to a very generous anonymous donor, allows these students live in a dormitory, take six different two-week half-day courses on topics ranging from the probabilistic method and the art of the non-constructive proof to the mathematics of internet security, and take part in a wide-ranging collection of special events and lectures—all the while surrounded by peers who not only do not consider their taste for mathematics weird, but share it. It’s a pretty exciting event all round, and not just for the students!

Other outreach efforts are less visible, but nonetheless significant. One that has exciting possibilities is a revival of the Math Fairs that we enjoyed for a number or years, thanks in part to a VIGRE fellowship awarded to graduate student Troy Winfree for the purpose. As before, the new Math Fairs—now transformed into Family Math Nights—take a bunch of undergraduates into high-needs elementary schools to play some mathematical games with the students and prepare them to teach and challenge their parents at an upcoming evening event. One change that greatly enhances our chances of making this a sustainable activity is that we have now joined forces with Explorations in Math, a non-profit organization that you can read about at www.explorationsinmath.org. They take care of logistical arrangements that used to fall to UW organizers—a vast improvement!

Less formal, and not even possible to tally, are the relationships that many faculty members, graduate students, and undergraduates have built with different schools around the area by tutoring, running math clubs, and helping to prepare for events such as Math Olympiads. Not something to put in a list, but a nice collection of reassurances that the mathematics department counts among its members many who are indeed willing to reach out!

Ginger Warfield