Week 1 email
Hey everyone!
It’s lovely to be back for the beginning of our second semester. Let me give a preliminary sense of what we have planned.
Tl;dr:
- Summary of semesters events
- Pi Ball
- Week 1 regular events (Pub Social and Maths Jam)
- New study group! - Game Theory
- Undergraduate talks - Looking for speakers!
- Weekly problem
From the standpoint of our regular events, we’ll have pub socials and maths jam in weeks one and two before settling into our usual once-every-two-weeks schedule. We’ll slowly ramp up our usual repertoire of other events in the coming weeks, this includes lunchtimes lectures; rewiring sessions; undergraduate talks and our weekly study group (this time on Game Theory).
Other than our regular events we have a few larger one-off events running: Pi Ball will be on March the 11th (more details below); SUMO (the Scottish Universities Mathematics Olympiad) will be running at the end of March (and will be hosted down in Glasgow), and we’ll be running the Student-Staff Charity quiz (date TBD).
Without further ado, I’ll get into our upcoming events.
Pi Ball
Run in collaboration with the School of Mathematics and Statistics, Pi Ball is perhaps the largest event SUMS is involved with.
The evening will start around 18:30-19:00ish with a three-course meal. We will then transition into a Ceilidh which will run into the following morning.
For more details please keep an eye on our Facebook page (link below).
Tickets are due to be released on Monday, further details will be in a follow-up email. If it’s anything like last year you’ll need to be ready to buy the moment they’re released if you want one.
Where: Old Course Hotel When: Sat 11th March, 18:30 Facebook link: https://fb.me/e/2AaP7G7oQ
Week 1 Pub Social
Our first pub social of the semester will run as usual, we’ll meet in the Whey Pat to socialise and play games (exploding kittens was popular at the end of last semester). Drinking and games are optional.
Where: The Whey Pat
When: Wednesday from 20:00
Facebook link: https://fb.me/e/45nFNCVhU
Week 1 Maths Jam
We’ll meet at the Union to play board/card games and socialise. It’s usually very chill and a lot of fun.
Where: Union Committee Room (middle floor of Union)
When: Saturday 21st, 13:00-15:00
Facebook link: https://fb.me/e/3ilMl27vn
New Study Group - Game Theory
We’ll be starting a new study group in week 2/3. This should run in a similar fashion to how the Knot Theory Study Group ran last semester.
I’d like to note that we’ve chosen Game Theory to be approachable to everyone, if you’re in your first year, you should be able to participate.
More details on our first session will be released in the coming weeks.
Undergraduate talks - Looking for speakers!
This semester we are delighted to announce the return of our series of undergraduate talks, and we are looking for new speakers!
The talks can be of any length, and on any topic in maths. There is no minimum level of knowledge required, and we welcome speakers from any year. These talks could be inspired by your final year project, your own research, or just any bit of maths that interests you! Last semester we received several excellent talks, covering topics such as the history of mathematics in St Andrews, square-free words, and graph theory.
These talks are great opportunities to work on your public speaking skills in preparation for your burn/final year talk, and also look great on your cv!
If you are interested in delivering a talk as part of this series, please email sums@st-andrews.ac.uk to register your interest!
That’s all for now. I wish you all the best for week 1 and hope to see some of you at our events.
Sincerely,
Dan Roebuck
President of SUMS
This week’s problem is from round 1 of the 2020 BMO (British Maths Olympiad). It is as follows:
“A square piece of paper is folded in half along a line of symmetry. The resulting shape is then folded in half along a line of symmetry of the new shape. This process is repeated until n folds have been made, giving a sequence of n + 1 shapes. If we do not distinguish between congruent shapes, find the number of possible sequences when:
a) n = 3;
b) n = 6;
c) n = 9.”