Michigan Undergraduate Mathematics Conference

On Saturday, October 21, Hope College hosted the Ninth Annual Michigan Undergraduate Mathematics Conference. There were approximately 100 faculty and students in attendance from 14 different colleges and universities.

Thirteen students presented talks with topics from applied and pure mathematics like “The Dynamics of a Volleyball Serve” and “Classification of Invariants of Rational Functions”. Also included were talks in the area of mathematical biology and mathematics education.

In addition to the student talks, presentations were given about various graduate programs in mathematics and statistics as well as REU opportunities for next summer.

Bob Devaney from Boston University delivered the keynote address, entitled “The Fractal Geometry of the Mandelbrot Set”. He shared the beautiful mathematics that lurks behind the beautiful image of the Mandelbrot set and how it relates to the filled Julia set. It was a very informational and entertaining talk.

The conference concluded with the game Induction Seduction. Eight teams of students competed to determine the rule that was behind a sequence of numbers. Different sequences were determined acceptable or not acceptable until a rule was finally discovered. All students competing received some great prizes that were donated by sponsors of the conference.

A grant from the MAA Regional Undergraduate Mathematics Conference Program funded through the NSF was awarded to Hope College to support the conference this year. This once again made it possible to have the conference “registration free”. A complete list of talks and sponsors is available at www.math.hope.edu/mumc.html.

Todd Swanson, Hope C

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