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Mathematics

Mathematics is beautiful and useful. Students of mathematics learn both how to explore abstract mathematical ideas and also how to solve quantitative problems from the natural and social sciences.

The Mathematics department offers:

Majors

Minors

Problem of the Week

Each week’s entries will be scored by an illustrious panel of faculty judges. Each week’s winner(s) will get a stylish and prestigious P.O.W. prize button, and the student(s) with the highest score at the end of each semester will win the Paul Mugabi Problem-solving award.

View the current problem of the week

Our distinguished faculty & student’s publications

  • Article: The minimum size of signed sumsets, Electronic Journal of Combinatorics 22 (2015), #P2.50. by Bela Bajnok and Ryan Matzke

  • Article: “Chutes and Ladders with Large Spinners.” College Mathematics Journal 45 (September 2014), 289-295. by Connors, Darcie and Darren Glass

  • Article: Primes and Involutions of Z_n^+, Involve 8 (2015), 653-663. by Karenna Genzlinger and Keir Lockridge, Sophie Germain

News

Colloquium Series

Fall 2018

Nonlinear Waves - Dr. Michael Shearer, North Carolina State University

October 18, 2018

As an introduction to the broad subject of nonlinear waves, I’ll show a variety of wave equations that are fundamental to the study of shock waves and dispersive waves. G.B. Whitham formulated a system of partial differential equations that describe the evolution of the essential features of oscillatory waves. Through examples, asymptotics and numerical experiments, I’ll discuss phenomena related to properties of the Whitham modulation equations.

The Unlikely Friendship of Math and Science - Ben Orlin, author of Math with Bad Drawings

October 30, 2018

Math and science are often lumped together - in universities, on bookshelves, and in acronyms. But what, exactly, do the hard-nosed pragmatist science and soft-spoken dreamer mathematics have in common? On the one hand, mathematics is a toolkit, crafted to serve real-world purposes. On the other hand, math is a realm of pure logic, ideas pursued for their own sake. My question: How is it that, from knot theory to meta-logic to higher-dimensional geometry, the math that sounds the most fanciful turns out to be the most useful?

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Mathematics Spotlight

Liberals arts environment fosters mathematics innovation
Liberal arts environment fosters mathematics innovation