Mathematical Adventures for Students and Amateurs (Spectrum) [Paperback]

David F. Hayes (Author), Tatiana Shubin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 21, 2005 | Series: Spectrum

This is a partial record of the Bay Area Math Adventures (BAMA), a lecture series for high school students (and incidentally their teachers, parents, and other interested adults) hosted by San Jose State and Santa Clara Universities in the San Francisco Bay Area. These lectures are aimed primarily at talented high school students and as a result, the mathematics in some cases is far from what one would expect to see in talks at this level. There are serious mathematical issues addressed here. The authors are distinguished mathematicians; some are bright newcomers while others have been well known in mathematical circles for decades. We hope that this book will capture some of the magic of these talks that have filled auditoriums at the host schools almost monthly for several years. Join the students in sharing these mathematical adventures.

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

This is a partial record of the Bay Area Math Adventures (BAMA), a lecture series for high school students These lectures are aimed primarily at talented high school students, The authors are distinguished mathematicians; some are bright newcomers while others have been well known in mathematical circles for decades.

About the Author

David Hayes is Chair of the Department of Computer Science at San Jose State University.

Tatiana Shubin is Associate Professor of Mathematics at San Jose State University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: The Mathematical Association of America (April 21, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0883855488
• ISBN-13: 978-0883855485
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,712,472 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Plants a set of viable mathematical seeds, March 13, 2005

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mathematical Adventures for Students and Amateurs (Spectrum) (Paperback)

Some of the most prominent mathematicians have delivered a talk in the Bay Area Mathematical Adventures (BAMA) series. It is a sequence of lectures for high school age people designed to expose them to some of the beautiful aspects of mathematics. However, the lectures are open to others, so many teachers, middle school students, parents and other interested adults have attended. This book is a written collection of some of the lectures, although none is a literal recording of the event.

Some of the lecture titles and topics in the book are:

*) "Prime Numbers and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence", a discussion of how messages to aliens should be organized along prime number lines.

*) "Juggling Patterns, Passing and Posets", a mathematical explanation of the different actions used in juggling.

*) "Probability and Surprise", how non-intuitive statistical results were used to teach mathematics to French psychology students.

*) "Space Shuttle Geometry", a description of good and bad ways to verify that an o-ring is indeed round. This is presented in the context of the failure of the o-rings that led to the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger.

*) "Breaking Driver's License Codes", where a mathematician tries to determine the algorithm whereby the personal information about a driver is used to compute the personal identifier that they are assigned.

The purpose of the series is to instill in the listeners an appreciation for how widely mathematics is used and in that respect, the organizers and lecturers have clearly succeeded. Of course, some of the topics require more mathematical knowledge than others, but none is beyond the stated bounds. If they think about it hard enough and in the proper way, the determined high school student will be able to understand every adventure.

Teachers of college mathematics will also find some material for their classes in the book. Each adventure could be used as the foundation for a lecture in some unusual uses of mathematics or the primer that leads to a more detailed investigation of a mathematical topic. This is not a popular work in mathematics, the purpose is to plant a seed of mathematical interest and all of the seeds in the book are viable.

Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted with permission.