The Department of Mathematics will be participating in the 3rd annual Science Rendezvous this Saturday, May 8th from 11 am – 5 pm. The event is a celebration of science and follows a festival format to bring science education and UofT research to the general public. More information on the event can be found at http://www.sciencerendezvous.ca/uoft/ .
News @ The University of Toronto recently wrote an article on the event as well.
The event is free and open to all members of the public.
Congratulations to members of the math department for their participation in the 2009 Toronto Marathon.
The Math Relay Team consisted of seven (7) graduate students and one faculty member and was named “Mathletes IV”. This is the 3rd time the math department has entered a relay team into the race. In 2006, there were 2 teams, which placed 29th (Mathlete I) and 23rd (Mathletes II). Last year the team (Mathletes III) placed 13th and this year (Mathletes IV) placed 3rd out of over 200 teams.
The team members (in order of their legs of the race) were:
The total length of the course is 42 km meaning seven of the runners ran 5km and one ran 7km. The goal of the team was to place in the top 10!
The total time for the course from the team was 3 hours, 9 minutes and 9 seconds.
The marathon raises funds for various charities, including Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto General Hospital, Diabetes Canada, and Sick Kids.
Congratulations on a job well done!
If you spin a cube quickly on its axis, can you turn it into a sphere? Anyone studying geometry or geometric theory would tell you no. Rubix, however, has attempted to do just that turning their famous, multi-coloured Cube into the new sphere and the Math Department’s own Conan Wu was there to test it out.
An article in the Toronto Star back in July featured Wu puzzling over the new Rubix sphere and attempting to solve it. After only a few hours, two precisely, she had it solved. She then worked at speeding her time up to a mere 15 minutes, most likely a new record in Canada.
At 20 years old Wu has already
successfully finished her undergraduate degree, a four year program in only two, and is now attending graduate school.
We wanted to get some more information from this wonder of mathematics, and Rubix Cube solver, so we sat down with Conan to get some more information.
Well…in fact, I don’t like it ‘that much’. It’s true that I have played with it when I was a kid, and I like puzzles such as Rubik’s cube. But I’m not a ‘cubing fan’. I just sometimes use it to ‘find something to do for my hands while thinking about math problems’.
Why not? It’s naturally the most beautiful subject in the world. I’ve enjoyed doing mathematics for as long as I can remember.
I started September 2007 and graduated August 2009
Dynamical systems and possibly some kind of metric geometry although I’m still exploring.
Northwestern University doing my PhD in mathematics.
In general, I think mathematics is fascinating because it’s (at least from my point of view) independent of the physical world. i.e. people do math because it’s interesting in its own right, and typically we don’t care about what does the theory do to the rest of the world. Mathematics is pretty much the unique subject with this property.
Honestly, my childhood dream was to go to MIT. One thing leads to another and I ended up in UofT.
But now I truly believe UofT is indeed the perfect place for me. One thing I liked the most about our department was the flexibility of our undergraduate program. i.e. instead of sticking with definite requirements and rules, they are willing to modify the program as long as the student is capable of doing more advanced stuff. For example, when I first came in as a high school student, I was allowed to take 8 math courses per semester, including graduate courses; I was also given the oppotunity to TA a third year pure math course while I was only a sophomore. I don’t think this could happen anywhere else in the world.
Traveling, photography, drawing and painting, practicing magic tricks.
Although I have officially graduated from UofT, but I have kept in touch with various faculty members here. In particular I come back to Toronto every month to meet and work with some of my professors. I think through the undergrad program, I have built many mathematical connections with our department, some of which may last a lifetime. I wish to sincerely thank our department for providing me all the right opportunities.
We would like to sincerely thank Conan for taking the time to speak with us and we wish her all the best in her continued studies and hope she continues to keep in touch!
Click here to read the full Toronto Star article