Announcements

The Stanford Math Circle resumes on Thursday, April 4th. Participation in the Elementary Circles are limited to enrolled students; Everyone is welcome to visit the advanced circle, but should be aware that:

• The material is aimed at high school students with an interest in mathematics. Younger students are welcome to participate, but many sessions of the circle may assume familiarity with mathematical concepts to which they have not yet been exposed.
• Anyone who thinks he or she might be interested may come to one or two sessions to try it out, but those who decide to participate regularly should enroll and help support the cost of the program.

For applications to both programs see the "Apply" link to the left. Note that the elementary circles have a waiting list, and it may take some time before a space is available for your student.

One nice tradition the advanced math circle has is that one family signs up to bring a simple (non-messy!) snack for the group each week. Drinks need not be included, there is ample water nearby. There will be about 40 students attending (possibly a few more than this in the first week or two).

The Form to sign up for a snack date is here:

There is a google groups mailing list for the Stanford Math Circle: roughly once a week during the school year, a message is sent out with information about upcoming sessions of the advanced circle and any other upcoming contests or events in the Bay Area that might be of interest to math students (of any pre-college age) in the Bay Area.

You can still join the SF Bay Area ARML teams! Top students from different high schools throughout the region come together and work on 15-person teams to solve challenging problems. The contest takes place May 31-June 1 at four different locations across the country simultaneously! Teams from the west coast compete at UNLV in Las Vegas. Portions of the test involve individual work and others involve group work; Some portions are short-answer questions, others require written proofs. You can see a bit more about the contest at www.arml.com

SFBA teams are formed with the aid of mathleague.org and practices are run at Stanford under the supervision of the Stanford Undergraduate Math Organization (SUMO). The top few teams are selectively chosen, but they will bring as many students as want to participate and can fit on the bus! The practice schedule is at http://stanford.edu/~moorxu/2013ARML/ and additional team information and instructions are at: http://mathleague.org/armlsfba.php

Math Prize for Girls is a great contest held in September each year at MIT which will award 49,000 dollars in cash prizes (plus other gifts to all invited participants). Girls in 11th grade or below, who took any AMC 10 or 12 contest in February 2013 are eligible to apply. See http://mathprize.atfoundation.org for more information. Roughly 300 applicants will be invited to participate. (The cutoff to be invited is APPROXIMATELY the same as AIME qualification cutoffs, but will depend on the applicant pool). Travel and lodging costs are not included. Several students from the Bay Area have done very well in this contest in previous years. Deadline to sign up is June 15.

The Julia Robinson Math Festival returns to Stanford on Saturday, May 11 from 9 AM to 1 PM. Students in grades 6-12 work on fun and challenging math activities while earning raffle tickets for prizes. The cost is \$10 per student. Ideally, students should sign up in groups, possibly school groups, and parent/teacher chaperones or volunteers are needed (chaperones/volunteers attend for free).

Professor Curtis McMullen of Harvard University will be giving the annual Karel deLeeuw public math lecture at Stanford at 7:30 pm on May 14, 2013. The title of his lecture is "Mathematics as Metaphor: from Curved Spaces to Quantum Topology". Concerning his lecture Professor McMullen writes, “Mathematics seems to develop by revisiting a few basic motifs over and over again. This talk will describe some of these classical and modern motifs, their appearances in astronomy, chemistry and architecture, and their echoes in the paradoxes currently facing physics. It will be accessible to an audience of all ages and backgrounds.”

The AMS/MSRI Mathematical Circles Library is an excellent series of books published jointly by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI). There are currently 12 volumes, and they cover different age ranges and levels of difficulty. Some are aimed at students and some are aimed at teachers. Most of the books cost \$18.75 (plus shipping) if ordered directly from the AMS web site..

older announcements

Summer 2012: There are two summer puzzles available, based on problems from the spring quarter of the (primarily high school) math circle.

Please visit our Archives to see information about previous sessions (including sample lecture notes, handouts, and other SMC materials). including the Spring 2013 schedule.

Students in grades 9 or above who would like to see if the Advanced Math Circle is right for them are welcome to come to a session or two to see what it's like; if they decide to continue they should register (registration information for Fall 2012 is not yet available). The Elementary Math Circle (for students in grades 1-4) is not able to accept unannounced visitors. Please email the director if you have any questions about the SMC!

The fee for participation in the SMC is $125 per academic quarter. This fee will generate funding for honoraria for session leaders, website maintenance, administrative costs, and use of the Stanford University facilities. Please note that financial aid is available and that we will not exclude students due to financial hardship, so please let us know if the fee would cause financial difficulty for your family.

Note: is a solution of the following problem: Draw 12 circles in a plane so that every circle is tangent to exactly 5 others. Can you find other solutions?

Thanks to Paul Mennen, who wrote the code to generate this particular solution.