News + Events

BPI Alumnus Hancy Maxis ’15 Featured in the Hechinger Report

Hancy Maxis ’15, Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) alumnus, spoke with the Hechinger Report about the role that learning math played in his life upon his release. He recalls considering the question of, “Once I am back in New York City, once I am back in the economy, how will I be marketable? For me, math was that pathway.”

Lauren Rose on Incorporating Puzzles and Games into the Mathematics Classroom

Associate Professor of Mathematics Lauren Rose was invited to give a workshop as part of SIGMAA Inquiry-Based Learning’s Workshop Series. Rose showed that one way to develop and explore active learning strategies is through the use of puzzles and games, which can be used to introduce and explore mathematical concepts related to the course material, or as a way to invite exploration.

Five Bard College Students Win Gilman International Scholarships to Study Abroad

Five Bard College students, Ezra Calderon ’25, Adelaide Driver ’26, Dashely Julia ’26, Nyla Lawrence ’26, and Brenda Lopez ’26, have been awarded highly competitive Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships by the US Department of State. Gilman Scholars receive up to $5,000, or up to $8,000 if also a recipient of the Gilman Critical Need Language Award.

Five Bard College Students Win Gilman International Scholarships to Study Abroad

Five Bard College students have been awarded highly competitive Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships by the US Department of State. Gilman Scholars receive up to $5,000, or up to $8,000 if also a recipient of the Gilman Critical Need Language Award, to apply toward their study abroad or internship program costs. This cohort of Gilman scholars, who will study or intern in over 90 countries, represents more than 500 US colleges and universities.

Bard College Mathematics and Italian Studies double major Ezra Calderon ’25, from Harlem, New York, has been awarded a Gilman Scholarship to study at the University of Trento in Italy via exchange, for the spring semester 2025. “This scholarship provides an exciting opportunity to improve my language skills and conduct research while abroad for my Senior Project in Italian Studies,” says Calderon.

Bard College Studio Art major Adelaide Driver ’26, from Taos, New Mexico, has been awarded a $4000 Gilman Scholarship to study at Kyoto Seika University in Japan, for the spring semester 2025. “Receiving this scholarship means the world to me. I have always wanted to study abroad, but money was a concern. This scholarship provides the opportunity to study what I love in an incredible place. I am so grateful,” says Driver. She serves as a peer counselor at Bard and will be studying illustration at Kyoto Seika.

Bard College junior Dashely Julia ’26, who is jointly majoring in Architecture and Art History with a concentration in Latin American and Iberian studies, has been awarded a $3000 Gilman Scholarship to study at Bard College Berlin in Germany, for the spring semester 2025. “Winning the Gilman Scholarship holds profound significance for me. It represents the opportunity to engage with diverse cultures and gain new perspectives that will enrich my understanding of art history and architecture. As someone deeply passionate about exploring how cultural and historical contexts shape artistic and architectural practices, studying abroad is more than an academic pursuit—it is a lifelong dream come true,” says Julia, who is a Posse Puerto Rico Scholar and lead peer mentor for the Office of Equity and Inclusion at Bard.

Bard College Computer Science major Nyla Lawrence ’26, from Atlanta, Georgia, has been awarded a $5,000 Gilman scholarship to study at National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan via exchange, for the spring semester 2025. “My grandmother told me this quote from Derek Bok: ‘If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.’ There is always something to be ignorant about but, I am happy the Gilman Scholarship provides others and myself the ability to learn more about the world while also studying. Studying abroad not only allows for broader education opportunities, but also life lessons and responsibility before exiting college, which I am really excited for,” says Lawrence, who will be learning Mandarin, her third language after English and German, to better communicate and traverse the land. Lawrence is currently one of three captains of the Bard women’s volleyball team and the Katherine Lynne Mester Memorial Scholar in Humanities for the 2024–2025 academic year at Bard.

Bard College Psychology major Brenda Lopez ’26, from Bronx, New York, has been awarded a $3,000 Gilman scholarship to study at Kyung Hee University in Seoul via exchange, for the spring semester 2025. “I couldn’t be more grateful, and I can’t wait to see how this scholarship helps me when spending my time in Korea,” says Lopez. At Bard, Lopez is part of the Trustee Leader Scholar Project Nicaragua Education Initiative and a clubhead for the K-DIARY club on campus.

The Department of State awarded the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship to approximately 1,600 American undergraduate students from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, in this fall 2024 cycle. All scholarship recipients are US undergraduate students with established high financial need as federal Pell Grant recipients. On average, 65 percent of Gilman recipients are from rural areas and small towns across the United States, and half are first-generation college or university students.

Since the program’s inception in 2001, more than 44,000 Gilman scholars have studied or interned in more than 170 countries around the globe. Supported by the US Congress, the Gilman Scholarship is an initiative of the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and is aided in its implementation by the Institute of International Education. To learn more about the Gilman Scholarship and its recipients, including this newest cohort, visit gilmanscholarship.org.

Post Date: 01-07-2025

More Math News

Alumna Mona Merling ’09 Wins Association for Women in Mathematics 2025 Joan and Joseph Birman Research Prize

Alumna Mona Merling ’09 Wins Association for Women in Mathematics 2025 Joan and Joseph Birman Research Prize

The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) has announced that Bard math alumna Mona Merling ’09 has won the 2025 AWM Joan and Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry. Merling was recognized for her innovative and impactful research in algebraic K-theory, equivariant homotopy theory, and their applications to manifold theory.

“I would not be here today without the many amazing women I was lucky to have as role models at every step of the way: from my math teacher back in Romania, Mihaela Flamaropol, who ignited my passion for math competitions; to my undergraduate mentor at Bard College, Lauren Rose, who early on inspired me about both research and teaching; to some of the senior leaders in my field who initiated and fostered the Women in Topology Network, Maria Basterra, Kristine Bauer, Kathryn Hess, and Brenda Johnson, who I was very privileged to be able to collaborate with as part of these workshops and who have always served as a huge inspiration and a source of endless support to me and other younger women in homotopy theory,” said Merling, who is currently associate professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania. She was previously a J.J. Sylvester Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, and received her PhD in Mathematics at the University of Chicago in 2014.

In a statement, AWM wrote: “Merling is an exceptional researcher whose work in algebraic topology has both depth and breadth. She is a recognized authority on equivariant homotopy theory and its applications to equivariant manifolds. Her recent work generalizes and reinterprets results in differential topology in the equivariant context. Her work is the first progress seen in decades on certain foundational questions about equivariant manifolds.”

The AWM Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry serves to highlight to the community outstanding contributions by women in the field and to advance the careers of the prize recipients. The prize is awarded every other year and was made possible by a generous contribution from Joan Birman, whose work has been in low dimensional topology, and her husband, Joseph, who was a theoretical physicist specializing in applications of group theory to solid state physics.

Read more at AWM

Post Date: 09-10-2024

Bard Physicists Paul Cadden-Zimansky, Li-Heng Henry Chang ’23, Ziyu Xu ’23, and Shea Roccaforte ’21 Coauthor Cover Story in the American Journal of Physics

Bard Physicists Paul Cadden-Zimansky, Li-Heng Henry Chang ’23, Ziyu Xu ’23, and Shea Roccaforte ’21 Coauthor Cover Story in the American Journal of Physics

Associate Professor of Physics Paul Cadden-Zimansky and three recent Bard graduates in physics and mathematics Li-Heng Henry Chang ’23, Ziyu Xu ’23, and Shea Roccaforte ’21, have coauthored the cover story in the July 2024 issue of the American Journal of Physics. Their peer-reviewed research article, “Geometric visualizations of single and entangled qubits,” presents a new way of visualizing the phenomenon of quantum entanglement between two interacting objects. Intended for a range of audiences—from students just starting to learn about concepts in quantum mechanics to active researchers who are using quantum bits ("qubits") to create new types of computers, sensors, and secure communication systems—the article focuses on visual tools and maps that can be used to complement the formal mathematics and algebra of quantum mechanics.

Read in the American Journal of Physics

Post Date: 07-09-2024

Professor Lauren Rose Interviewed on the Today Show and in the New York Times about Using the Rubik’s Cube as a Teaching Tool

Professor Lauren Rose Interviewed on the Today Show and in the New York Times about Using the Rubik’s Cube as a Teaching Tool

On the occasion of the Rubik’s Cube’s 50th anniversary, Associate Professor of Mathematics Lauren Rose was interviewed on the Today Show and quoted in the New York Times about using the Rubik’s Cube as a teaching tool. Invented by Erno Rubik in 1974, the Rubik’s Cube has 43 quintillion permutations, and an estimated one in seven people in the world have played the puzzle. Rose, who can solve the cube in under a minute, uses the Rubik’s Cube to teach both math majors and non-STEM majors. “I can get students who hate math to learn how to solve the cube and then I can say, ‘You know, you just did math,’” says Rose. She believes the Rubik’s Cube’s enduring appeal is that it is “so fun and accessible.”

Watch on the Today Show

Read more in the New York Times

Post Date: 07-02-2024

Bard Conservatory Student Hannah Park-Kaufmann ’24 Awarded Knight-Hennessy Scholarship

Bard Conservatory Student Hannah Park-Kaufmann ’24 Awarded Knight-Hennessy Scholarship

Hannah Park-Kaufmann ’24, who is graduating with dual degrees in piano performance and mathematics, has won a Knight-Hennessy Scholarship for graduate-level study at Stanford University. Park-Kaufmann will pursue a master's degree in computational and mathematical engineering at Stanford University School of Engineering. After completing her master’s degree at Stanford through Knight-Hennessy, she will matriculate into the PhD program in applied mathematics at Harvard University, a program to which she has already been accepted. As a pianist, Hannah became fascinated by human fine-motor movement. She aspires to help more people reach mastery in physiologically complex professions by using experiment, theory, and computation to explore what simpler patterns might underlie our movements, and turning this understanding into new educational paradigms.

At Bard, Hannah was president of the Association for Women in Mathematics Chapter, tutored mathematics in New York state prisons through the Bard Prison Initiative, and gave a TEDx talk on a research study she designed and led at MIT on the physiological correlates of healthy versus injury-prone piano playing. She participated in the Polymath Jr., Emory and CMU mathematics REUs, and has coauthored multiple papers published in peer reviewed journals. Her teams’ projects won first place at the international hackathon HackMIT in the tracks Sustainability (2022) and Education (2023, with Elliot Harris ’24). She is the recipient of the Bard Distinguished Scientist Scholar Award, the Community Action Award, the Mind, Brain and Behavior Award, the Seniors to Seniors Award, and the Conservatory Scholarship.

Established in 2016, the Knight-Hennessy Scholarship program seeks to prepare students to take leadership roles in finding creative solutions to complex global issues. Scholars receive full funding to pursue any graduate degree at Stanford and have additional opportunities for leadership training, mentorship, and experiential learning across multiple disciplines.

Post Date: 05-07-2024

Bard Mathematician Lauren Rose Gives Talk at Hope College about Her Card Game, Quads

Bard Mathematician Lauren Rose Gives Talk at Hope College about Her Card Game, Quads

The Mathematics and Statistics Department at Hope College invited Bard Associate Professor of Mathematics Lauren Rose to give an interactive discussion to faculty and students about the card game Quads, which she invented with Jeffrey Pereira ’13, who helped design Quads as part of his Senior Project. During her talk “Quads: A SET-like Game with a Twist,” Rose explained the rules of the game—players try to create as many quad groupings as they can, given several conditions—and participants had a chance to try their hand at it. “SET is a popular card game that you can teach a five-year-old (because you don’t need to be able to read) but there’s a ton of math in it,” said Rose. “SET contains three cards … so we asked, ‘What if we did four cards?’” Although the rules are straightforward, the game and its variations apply mathematical concepts including combinatorics, probability, geometry, and algebra. Rose and other mathematicians continue to study the underlying layers of math and logic that drive the game play. The paper, “How Many Cards Should You Lay Out in a Game of EvenQuads,” coauthored by Tim Goldberg ’02, Raphael Walker ’21, Julia Crager ’23, Felicia Flores ’23, Darrion Thornburgh ’24, and Daniel Rose Levine ’24, was recently published the journal La Matematica. The cards in the official Quads game, published as EvenQuads by the Association for Women in Math, feature images and biographies of female mathematicians on one side, which Rose hopes will encourage women to consider entering the traditionally male-dominated field of mathematics.

Read more

Post Date: 04-03-2024

Bard College Named a Top Producer of Fulbright Students for 2023–24

Bard College Named a Top Producer of Fulbright Students for 2023–24

Bard College is proud to be included on the list of U.S. colleges and universities that produced the most 2023–24 Fulbright students and scholars. Each year, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs announces the top producing institutions for the Fulbright Program, the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program. The Chronicle of Higher Education publishes the lists annually.

Seven graduates from Bard received Fulbright awards for academic year 2023–24. Getzamany “Many” Correa ’21, a Global and International Studies major, and Elias Ephron ’23, a joint major in Political Studies and Spanish Studies, will live in Spain as Fulbright English Teaching Assistants (ETAs). Biology major Macy Jenks ’23 will be an ETA in Taiwan. Eleanor Tappen ’23, a Spanish Studies major, will be an ETA in Mexico. Juliana Maitenaz ’22, who graduated with a BA in Global and International Studies and a BM in Classical Percussion Performance, was selected for an independent study–research Fulbright scholarship to Brazil. Bard Conservatory alumna Avery Morris ’18, who graduated with a BA in Mathematics and a BM in Violin Performance, won a Fulbright Study Research Award to Poland. Evan Tims ’19, who was a joint major in Written Arts and Human Rights with a focus on anthropology at Bard, received a Fulbright-Nehru independent study–research scholarship to India. Additionally, Adela Foo ’18 won a Fulbright Study Research Award to Turkey through Yale University, where she is a PhD candidate in art history.

“As an institution, Bard College is proud and honored to be included in the list of Top Producing Fulbright Institutions for 2023-2024,” said Molly J. Freitas, Ph.D., associate dean of studies and Fulbright advisor at Bard. “We believe that Fulbright's mission to promote and facilitate cross-cultural exchange and understanding through teaching and research is in perfect alignment with Bard's own institutional identity and goals. We wish to extend our congratulations to our newest Fulbright awardees and reiterate our gratitude to the faculty, staff, and community members who have supported these students during the Fulbright application process and throughout their time as Bard students.”

“Fulbright’s Top Producing Institutions represent the diversity of America’s higher education community. Dedicated administrators support students and scholars at these institutions to fulfill their potential and rise to address tomorrow’s global challenges. We congratulate them, and all the Fulbrighters who are making an impact the world over,” said Lee Satterfield, Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Fulbright is a program of the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the program.

Fulbright alumni work to make a positive impact on their communities, sectors, and the world and have included 41 heads of state or government, 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 80 MacArthur Fellows, and countless leaders and changemakers who build mutual understanding between the people of the United State and the people of other countries.

Read more

Post Date: 02-13-2024

Mathematics Events

2022 Past Events

Tuesday, December 13, 2022

Reem-Kayden Center 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Join our December graduating seniors as the present their work!
Wednesday, November 16, 2022

Leon Horsten, Universitat Konstanz
RKC 111 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
In my talk, I consider the kinds of reasons that a mathematician has for believing in mathematical statements. Moreover, we investigate some of the epistemic concepts that are connected to these reasons, such as justification, mathematical justification, proof, formal proof, philosophical proof.
This area is the battleground of the disputes between the philosophers of mathematical practice on the one hand, and the ‘traditional’ philosophers of mathematics on the other hand. I will argue for a middle road in this debate.
Wednesday, November 9, 2022

Jeff Suzuki, Brooklyn College
RKC 111 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Everyone knows that calculus was invented by Newton. Or Leibniz. Actually, the real inventor was Isaac Barrow (Newton’s teacher), but Pierre de Fermat (1601–1661) solved all three of the main problems of calculus: finding tangents, extreme values, and areas under a curve. We’ll introduce Fermat’s method, then show how it leads to the familiar result that the integral of 1/x is ln x, and e as the base of the natural logarithmic function.

Jeff Suzuki was probably born indecisive, and double majored in history and mathematics with a concentration in physics. He avoided having to choose between them by writing a dissertation on the history of celestial mechanics. Since then, he’s done everything possible to avoid specialization, venturing into constitutional law, patents, and mathematics education, and as of this past weekend, is looking into the possibility of developing an open-world game based around mathematics.
Friday, November 4, 2022

Lisa Shabel, Ohio State University
Barringer House 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Kant’s metaphysical project is framed by his revolutionary claim that some judgments are both synthetic and a priori knowable: one must seek their justification independent of sense experience (i.e., they are a priori) and yet the meaning of such judgments cannot be grasped via conceptual analysis (i.e., they are non-analytic). Kant claims further that allmathematical truths have this distinctive character, and he came to this view by reflecting on mathematical practice. We will discuss how to understand Kant’s view of mathematical truth in light of the mathematics with which he was engaged.
Wednesday, November 2, 2022

RKC 111 11:45 am – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Friday, October 28, 2022

Andrew Gregory, University College London
Hegeman 204 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Plato's use of number in his music theory, theory of matter, and cosmology raises some interesting questions in metaphysics and philosophy of science. What is the relation between mathematics, physics, and the world? Is there a beauty and simplicity to some mathematics and does that capture the nature of the world? What is the distinction (historical, philosophical) between mathematical physics and numerology? This paper looks at the nature and influence of Plato's views.
Monday, October 24, 2022

James D. Lewis, University of Alberta
RKC 111 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
In topology, there is the notion of a linking number of two oriented disjoint curves in affine 3-space. An algebraic generalization is the concept of a height pairing, which lies at the confluence of arithmetic and geometry. We explain a motivating example situation in an algebraic geometric setting. This talk is targeted to a general audience.
Friday, October 21, 2022
Reem-Kayden Center 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Join our summer research students as they present their work!

Download: BSRI abstract booklet F22-3.pdf
Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Karin Reinhold Larsson, SUNY Albany
RKC 111 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Canadian-American astronomer Simon Newcomb was the first to notice the curious fact that the ten digits do not occur with the same frequency in logarithmic tables. This weird fact was observed on other sequences in nature such as the Fibonacci sequence, powers of two and factorials. We will learn a little of the history of Benford’s Law (BL) and do some simulations that will give us an insight to understand the reason behind BL. It turns out that many real life datasets follow BL. Understanding which processes follow BL has provided useful applications of BL into financial fraud detection.

Karin Reinhold Larsson is an associate professor at the University at Albany, SUNY. She was born in Argentina, obtained a licenciatura in mathematics from the University of Buenos Aires and a PhD in mathematics from Ohio State University. Her main research interests are in Ergodic Theory with connections to probability and harmonic analysis. She has served as president of the University Senate and she is involved the local community serving as statistical consultant in our own Peace Project.
Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Elana Kalashnikov, University of Waterloo
RKC 111 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Algebraic geometry is the study of ‘shapes’ cut out by polynomial equations. One of the major open problems facing mathematicians today is how to classify these shapes. More complicated shapes can be broken into basic building blocks - so to classify all varieties it suffices to classify the basic building blocks. In this talk, we’ll explain how insights in string theory have given mathematicians a promising way of classifying the building blocks using Mirror Symmetry. The key idea is that each building block should correspond to certain decorated polytopes. Given a building block, the question is then how to produce such a polytope: this is done by degenerating the equations cutting out the shape of the building block. We’ll discuss what’s known about this approach, and what’s left to do, along with explicit examples.
Wednesday, September 28, 2022
RKC 111 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Antu Santanu “Towards a Universal Gibbs Phenomenon”
Felicia Flores & Darrion Thornburgh “2-Caps in the Game of EvenQuads”
Tina Giorgadze “Simplifying Text Using Sentence Fusion Graph”
Hannah Kaufmann “Data Assimilation for Geophysics Models: Glaciers and Storm Surge”
Josef Lazar “A Closer look at Projective SET”
Daniel Rose-Levine "Fun with Quads"
Wednesday, September 21, 2022

Pamela E. Harris, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
RKC 111 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Multiplex juggling sequences are generalizations of juggling sequences (describing throws of balls at discrete heights) that specify an initial and terminal configuration of balls and allow for multiple balls at any particular discrete height. Kostant’s partition function is a vector function that counts the number of ways one can express a vector as a nonnegative integer linear combination of a fixed set of vectors. What do these two families of combinatorial objects have in common? Attend this talk to find out!
Wednesday, September 14, 2022

Liz McMahon, Lafayette College
RKC 111 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The card game SET is played with a special deck of 81 cards. There is quite a lot of mathematics that can be explored using the game; understanding that mathematics enhances our appreciation for the game, and the game enhances our appreciation for the mathematics! We’ll look at questions in combinatorics, probability, linear algebra, and especially geometry. There's also a Daily Puzzle, and we have found some interesting things out about that. If you’d like some practice before the talk, go to www.setgame.com (which will redirect you) for the rules and the Daily Puzzle.
Wednesday, September 7, 2022

Moshe Cohen, SUNY New Paltz
RKC 111 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A line arrangement is a finite collection of lines in the plane. We can study a line arrangement using algebra and geometry by looking at equations of lines as in high school algebra. We can study this using combinatorics by looking at the points that are intersections of lines. We can study this using topology by looking at the complement -- the leftover space. We can ask if the combinatorial information forecasts the topological information of the complement by studying the moduli space of all geometric realizations. I will introduce several fun problems for us to work on to help acquaint ourselves with this topic and its many complexities. No specific background is required.
Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Learn about the math major, meet other math students and faculty, learn about our weekly seminar, and have pizza!

RKC 111 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Wednesday, August 17, 2022
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito ‘60 Auditorium 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Questions about the Math Placement? Confused about what math course to take? Japheth Wood, Director of Quantitative Literacy, will be available to answer your questions.
Tuesday, August 16, 2022
Reem-Kayden Center, Laszlo Z. Bito ‘60 Auditorium 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Questions about the Math Placement? Confused about what math course to take? Japheth Wood, Director of Quantitative Literacy, will be available to answer your questions.
Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Reem-Kayden Center 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Abstract booklet below!

Download: Senior Project Poster session booklet S22-1.pdf
Wednesday, May 11, 2022
Andrew Schultz, Wellesley College
Hegeman 204A 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Binomial coefficients are a staple in the world of combinatorics. Their usefulness in enumeration is nearly unparalleled, but their humble beginnings belie intricate structure and surprising depth. In the pursuit of understanding binomial coefficients more completely, one can encode them in a family of polynomials called Gaussian coefficients. Do these Gaussian coefficients have their own structure and depth? In this talk we'll introduce the Gaussian coefficients and see some surprising ways in which they are (almost!) as nice as their more famous brethren (and maybe a way or two in which they are even nicer).
Monday, May 9, 2022

Matt Kerr
Washington University-St. Louis
Hegeman 204A 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Then first you'll have to construct the table, which game regulations insist must pass through five given points. When you're done with that I’ll pick N<10, and to beat me you have to shoot the ball (from wherever I put it) so it returns in exactly N steps to where it started.

If you're not put off by a vector space of polynomials, you can make the elliptic table; and if you know how to spot a complex torus, then (with practice and foci) you can win. This is how I trap unsuspecting students into learning a bit of algebraic geometry.

Because the real title of this talk is: two theorems on conics in the plane!
Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Shira Zerbib, Iowa State University
Hegeman 204A 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The KKM theorem, due to Knaster, Kuratowski and Mazurkiewicz in 1929, is a topological lemma reminiscent of Sperner's lemma and Brouwer's fixed point theorem. It has numerous applications in combinatorics, discrete geometry, economics, game theory and other areas. Generalizations of this lemma, in several different directions, were proved over the years (e.g., by Shapley, Gale, Komiya, Soberon) and have been widely applied as well. We will discuss a recent common generalization of all these theorems. We will also show two very different applications of KKM-type theorems: one is a proof of a conjecture of Eckhoff from 1993 on the line piercing numbers in certain families of convex sets in the plane, and the other is a theorem on fair division of multiple cakes among players with subjective preferences.
Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Marcus Michelen, University of Illinois-Chicago
Hegeman 204A 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Consider a polynomial of degree n whose coefficients are -1 or 1 independently and randomly chosen. What do its roots typically look like? It turns out that random polynomials are an example of a very common phenomenon: large random structures typically exhibit a lot of predictable behavior. I'll discuss some common examples of this phenomenon, discuss the case of random polynomials, and also explain some applications of these random objects to other fields of math and computer science. No experience in probability will be expected or required; the goal is to give a gentle introduction to some deep facts.
Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Natalie Frank, Vassar College
Hegeman 204A 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
"Aperiodic order" is the study of highly ordered structures that fall just short of being periodic. Geometric questions in mathematics and decidability questions in logic provided early theoretical models of such structures. The Nobel Prize-winning discovery of physical quasicrystals in the 1980s led to the wider interest in aperiodically ordered structures. This talk will describe the mathematics of symmetry, the central role symmetry played in the discovery of quasicrystals, and the mathematical models that are used to describe quasicrystals today.
Wednesday, February 23, 2022

Caitlin Leverson, Math Program
Hegeman 204A 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Knots, which you can think of as a string knotted up with the ends glued together, are simple to define but are challenging to tell the difference between. We will discuss a few interesting invariants, algorithms to associate a number to a knot, which we can use to help differentiate between knots. We will also talk about a related notion of knots, called Legendrian knots, where we add a geometric condition. No previous knowledge of knots will be assumed.
Friday, February 11, 2022
Andrew Harder, Lehigh University
Hegeman 107 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
An elliptic Lefschetz fibration is a smooth 4-manifold M (possibly with boundary) which admits a map to a surface S (possibly with boundary), and so that all but a finite number of fibers are diffeomorphic to a 2-torus, and the rest are homeomorphic to a “pinched” 2-torus. The classification of elliptic Lefschetz fibrations can be reduced to a (hard) problem in linear algebra whose solution is known in several cases — for instance, a theorem of Moishezon and Livné says that if S is just the 2-sphere then it is known that any elliptic Lefschetz fibration has 12n fibres which are pinched 2-tori for some integer n, and that the topology of M is completely determined by n.

Surprisingly, the situation where S is a 2-dimensional disc, despite being well studied, is not completely understood. In this talk, I will discuss an answer to this problem under certain conditions on the boundary of M and on the number of fibres which are singular. We reduce this problem to a question about linear algebraic objects called pseudo-lattices and apply a theorem of Kuznetsov to give a concrete description of a class of elliptic Lefschetz fibrations. Finally I will discuss my motivation for considering this problem and how this classification theorem reflects the numerical classification of weak del Pezzo surfaces in algebraic geometry. This is based on joint work with Alan Thompson.

Contact Us

Ethan Bloch
Mathematics Director
Phone: 845-758-7266
Email: [email protected]

News + Events

BPI Alumnus Hancy Maxis ’15 Featured in the Hechinger Report

BPI Alumnus Hancy Maxis ’15 Featured in the Hechinger Report

Lauren Rose on Incorporating Puzzles and Games into the Mathematics Classroom

Lauren Rose on Incorporating Puzzles and Games into the Mathematics Classroom

Five Bard College Students Win Gilman International Scholarships to Study Abroad

Five Bard College Students Win Gilman International Scholarships to Study Abroad

Alumna Mona Merling ’09 Wins Association for Women in Mathematics 2025 Joan and Joseph Birman Research Prize

Bard Physicists Paul Cadden-Zimansky, Li-Heng Henry Chang ’23, Ziyu Xu ’23, and Shea Roccaforte ’21 Coauthor Cover Story in the American Journal of Physics

Professor Lauren Rose Interviewed on the Today Show and in the New York Times about Using the Rubik’s Cube as a Teaching Tool

Bard Conservatory Student Hannah Park-Kaufmann ’24 Awarded Knight-Hennessy Scholarship

Bard Mathematician Lauren Rose Gives Talk at Hope College about Her Card Game, Quads

Bard College Named a Top Producer of Fulbright Students for 2023–24

Mathematics Events

2022 Past Events

Contact Us

Bard Math Resources