News + Events

Reem-Kayden Center  5:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Join our December graduating seniors as they present their senior project research!

  Albee 3rd Floor Math Lounge  6:00 pm – 8:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Association for Women in Mathematics is hosting a math-themed cookie decorating event. Snack and beverages included! Everyone is welcome.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  1:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Majoring (or interested) in math or physics but unsure about whether grad school is right for you?

The Distinguished Visiting Professorship of Mathematics and Physics is sponsoring a panel discussion, Q&A, and networking event with recent alums, admissions administrators, and faculty. We’ll talk about what MA and PhD programs are out there, what they are like, and how to optimize the rest of your time spent at Bard.

Open to all Bard students, especially those moderated in mathematics or physics.

Panelists:

Chuck Doran
Distinguished Visiting Professor of Mathematics and Physics, Bard College

Hal Haggard
Associate Professor of Physics, Bard College

Andrew Harder
Director of Graduate Admissions, Mathematics Department, Lehigh University

Stefan Mendez-Diez
Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Bard College

Clara Sousa-Silva
Assistant Professor of Physics, Bard College

Santanu Antu
Graduate Researcher, Yale Quantum Institute

Hannah Park-Kaufmann
Knight-Hennessy Scholar, Stanford University

Reem-Kayden Center Lobby  5:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Come and join us for a game night!  Refreshments for all and prizes for winners. Games to play include: Quads, SET, Rubik's Cube Solving/Mosaics and more.

Reem-Kayden Center  4:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Join our summer research students as they present their work!

George D. Rose, Bard class of ’63
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Since Galileo, the goal of scientific understanding is to explain complex phenomena with a compact description, a model. Yet today, artificial intelligence –specifically, machine-learning using neural nets– has engendered a radical departure from traditional approaches.  Machine-learning using neural nets is not grounded in a unifying theory. There are no hypotheses being tested. Instead, the goal is to find parameters (often billions of them) that can capture the phenomenon under consideration and to then utilize the parameters predictively. This approach has met with stunning success in multiple venues, but it is no longer science as we have come to know it.

Where do we go from here? In this talk, George D. Rose will address this question using the protein folding problem as an example.

Bertelsmann Campus Center, Yellow Room 214  11:45 am – 12:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
You are warmly invited to join us for an insightful coffee chat with Caitlin Myers, Professor of Economics at Middlebury College, who will be discussing her latest research on the impact of anti-abortion legislation on women.

Professor Myers' research examines issues related to gender, race, and the economy, with a particular focus on the effects of reproductive policies. Her work has been published in journals including the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Human Resources, and the Journal of Public Economics. It also has been featured by media outlets such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Salon, Vice, and Vox.

Sylvester James Gates, Jr.
Clark Leadership Chair in Science, Distinguished University Professor, and Regents Professor at the University of Maryland
Blithewood  5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
In 1995 Edward Witten, described by Brian Greene as “a million times smarter than we are,” proposed a solution to the “quantum gravity problem” that evaded Stephen Hawking. Until 2020, no solution consistent with Richard Feynman’s view of quantum theory had been found. Einstein believed “...science and art tend to coalesce,” and following this connection the speaker and two PhD students found the first such solution. This talk describes how artwork solved a mathematics problem. Reception to follow

The inaugural MathScape combines an international workshop on cutting-edge research in mathematics with a public lecture linking to the arts and humanities.  MathScape 2024 features the mathematics used by the physicists in their quest to create a “theory of everything”.  

MathScape 2024 is supported by Chuck Doran, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Mathematics and Physics

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

Reem-Kayden Center  5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4

Download: Senior Project Poster session booklet S24-FINAL CO

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee Third Floor Math Lounge  1:30 pm – 3:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  RKC 111  1:30 pm – 2:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Samantha Rehorst and Nasif Hossain

  Albee Third Floor Math Lounge  1:30 pm – 3:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee Third Floor Math Lounge  1:30 pm – 3:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

Yitzhak Melamed, Johns Hopkins University
Hegeman 204  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
In this paper I discuss the axiomatic manner in which Spinoza’s Ethics has been written, Spinoza’s reasons for choosing this manner of exposition, and its development throughout Spinoza’s writing career.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee Third Floor Math Lounge  1:30 pm – 3:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

  Albee Third Floor Math Lounge  1:30 pm – 3:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
A great place to study math, meet with your study group, and consult with a math tutor.

Geillan Aly, Compassionate Math
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  1:30 pm – 3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The field of STEM offers many personal and professional rewards. However, emotions may stand in the way of such rewards. In this workshop, we will explore imposter syndrome and other socioemotional phenomena which may affect one’s ability to engage with and succeed in a field as competitive and demanding as those in STEM. Participants will have an opportunity to explore and reflect on their feelings towards studying STEM. Participants begin by reflecting on and sharing their previous learning experiences to place these experiences in context, learning that: (1) they are not alone; (2) their experiences are likely not tied to them as an individual, but are a result of sociohistorical forces. This allows students to think deeply and critically about how they approach their studies. Participants then reorient themselves based on these new realizations and their motivation to succeed. This reorientation includes strategies and tips for studying, focusing on learning mathematics in particular. Finally the workshop gives participants an opportunity to work on a mathematical problem, setting the stage for a positive opportunity to engage with mathematics and their other studies. All participants are encouraged to participate in small-group and whole session discussions throughout the program, reducing the “I’m alone” stigma and forming bonds with others in the group. They are also encouraged to continue working and studying together after the workshop is completed.

Dr. Geillan Aly, the Founder of Compassionate Math, is a math educator who centers the socioemotional factors that contribute to success in mathematics. She holds the fundamental assumption that learning math is both an emotional and cognitive endeavor. A former award-winning Assistant Professor who has taught for over fifteen years, Dr. Aly transforms math classrooms through engaging professional development and student-focused workshops that center emotions while establishing a culture of engaging with rigorous mathematics. She received her PhD in Teaching and Teacher Education and Master’s in Mathematics from the University of Arizona. Underlying Dr. Aly’s work is a dedication to equity and social justice. She enjoys traveling and seeing live music and is an avid chef, wife, and mother to a beautiful boy.

  Hegeman 106  6:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Come celebrate Pi Day with us by enjoying pizza, pie, and games!

Sophia Stone, Lynn University
Hegeman 204A  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Plato reserved high esteem for mathematics, even saying in the Laws that learning mathematics was a necessity, that without the use or knowledge of mathematics, ‘a man cannot become a God to the world, nor a spirit, nor yet a hero, nor able earnestly to think and care for man.’ Bertrand Russell remarks on this passage in The Study of Mathematics, “Such was Plato’s judgment of mathematics; but the mathematicians do not read Plato, while those who read him know no mathematics, and regard his opinion upon this question as merely a curious aberration,” (Russell 1963, p. 85). 

Reflecting on Bertrand Russell’s ruminations about Plato, it is well known, though we no longer have direct evidence, that before the entrance to Plato’s Academy was the inscription, “no one should enter here unless he is a geometer.” Sprinkled throughout Plato’s dialogues are geometry problems (Meno), statements about the Odd and the Even (Phaedo, Euthyphro, Parmenides), and of course, that well known claim in his Republic VII, 526g-527c that while there are two kinds of numbers, those used in practical endeavors like star gazing and military soldier formation on the one hand, and those that can only be grasped in the mind on the other, that even those who are slow at calculation or reasoning, if they are educated in it, even if they gain nothing else, improve and generally become sharper in thinking than they were. So if mathematics, and especially the study of geometry, improves the quality of the soul and makes it easier to see the form of the Good (526e-527b6-8), then could Plato’s treatment of mathematics in his dialogues tell us something about his theory of forms?

In this talk, I’ll lay out some of the problems of understanding Plato’s theory of forms and why we have yet to solve these problems. While Plato saw the form-sensible relation as essentially a non-expressible mathematical relation, contemporary scholars commonly think of the form-sensible relation in terms of sets and its members. My own view is that we are unable to solve the problems of understanding Plato’s theory of forms because of our own advances in mathematics.