Mobile Mathematics Circle

Final Report

Academic Year 2017-2018

Math Circle Highlights

The Mobile Mathematics Circle had another successful year. Here are some of the year’shighlights:

• A total of 185 local high school and middle school students from 15 different schoolsparticipated in Math Circle activities, many attending regularly on a weekly basis.

• The Math Circle met 21 times during the academic year with an average attendance of42 students per session.

• Two guest speakers, Mr. Eric Harshbarger, Department of Mathematics at AuburnUniversity, and Dr. Jeff Mermin, Professor of Mathematics at Oklahoma State University,lead sessions.

• 45 students participated in the Mobile Mathematics Olympiad.

• The Mobile Mathematics Circle continued its successful collaboration with the AlabamaMath, Science, and Technology Initiative by providing mathematical content for theirprofessional development program for middle school teachers. The program is fundedby the Alabama Department of Education through the Math and Science PartnershipProgram.

• 8 graduate students (including 4 math teachers) in mathematics education participated inthe Mobile Mathematics Circle’s training. Students were introduced to problem solvingtechniques and experienced teaching through problem solving by actively participating inthe Math Circles. In addition, 2 home-school students, 5 parents and 6 USA professorswere among the attendees.

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Math Circle Meetings

The Mobile Math Circle met every Monday evening 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm except on holidaysand during breaks. Drs. Pillen and Prokhorov were the principal organizers and teachers ofthe Mobile Mathematics Circle during the academic year 2017-2018. The format for the ses-sions has always been the same. At 7:00 p.m. the students are given a handout consisting of10 to 15 problems on a common topic. They are challenged to work on them one problem ata time. Students volunteer to present solutions or suggest ideas that might lead to solutionsor they may ask questions. They may work together. They may come to the board to writeout their thoughts for all to see. The students are not shy about thinking out loud, and theyhave become more and more active as the year has given them experience in the Math Circle.As the students work and comment, the teachers in the room may move about to talk withindividual students. Refreshments are provided.

It follows a list of 15 participating schools (in alphabetical order):Alabama School of Math and Science, Baker High School, Blount High School, Causey Mid-dle School, Clark-Shaw Middle School, Corpus Christi Catholic School, Daphne High School,Davidson High School, McGill-Toolen Catholic High School, Murphy High School, PhillipsPreparatory Middle School, Sacred Heart Catholic High School, Satsuma High School, St.Luke’s Episcopal School, St. Paul’s Episcopal School.

In Spring 2018 Dr. Prokhorov taught a class entitled “Mathematical Problem Solving” tograduate students in USA’s Math Education Program. As part of the class work studentsparticipated in the Mobile Math Circle and co-taught three sessions of the Math Circle underthe supervision of Dr. Prokhorov.

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Circle Sessions for 2017-2018

Date Session leader Topic

9/11/2017 Dr. Prokhorov Mandelbrot Competition Problems.Logic, Number Theory, Optimization.

9/18/2017 Dr. Prokhorov Mandelbrot Competition Problems.Number theory, Logic, Arithmetic problems.

9/25/2017 Dr. Prokhorov Proportions. Arithmetic ratios.Algebra problems.

10/2 /2017 Dr. Pillen Knights, Lords and the Magic of Numbers.Number theory.

10/16/2017 Dr. Pillen Stand up for Your Rights.Number Theory.

10/23/2017 Mr. Eric Harshbarger (Guest speaker) Go First Dice.Combinatorics. Probability.

10/30/2017 Dr. Pillen It Was the Night Before Halloween.Number Theory. Game Theory.

11/6/2017 Dr. Prokhorov Logic Problems. Combinatorics.Game Theory. Number Theory.

11/13/2017 Dr. Pillen Plutarch in the Box. 3D Geometry.Surface Area. Integer Sequences.

11/27/2017 Dr. Prokhorov Geometry, Logic, Completing Squares.Expressions. Number Theory.

1/22/2018 Dr. Prokhorov Pick’s Theorem.Geometry. Area.

1/29/2018 Dr. Prokhorov Area. Perimeter. Geometry.Parabola. Ellipse.

2/5/2018 Dr. Jeff Mermin (Guest speaker) Conway’s Rational Tangles.Knot Theory.

2/19/2018 Mr. Wright, Mr. Cleverdon, Ms. Faith, Logic Puzzles. Arithmetic. Numbers Theory.Ms. Evans, Mr. Holbrook, Ms. Fendley,Mr. McCleave, Mr. Lang(Math Education Graduate Students)

2/26/2018 Dr. Prokhorov Fractions. Decimals. Ratios.Percents. Proportions.

3/5/2018 Dr. Pillen Math Olympiad Problems.Math Games. Invariants.

3/12/2018 18th Mobile Math Olympiad.

3/19/2018 Mr. Wright, Mr. Cleverdon, Ms. Faith, Number Theory. Pigeonhole Principle.Ms. Evans, Mr. Holbrook, Ms. Fendley,Mr. McCleave, Mr. Lang

4/9/2018 Dr. Prokhorov Math Olympiad Problems. Functions.Logic Problems. Number Theory

4/16/2018 Mr. Wright, Mr. Cleverdon, Ms. Faith, Number Theory. Geometry. Math Puzzles.Ms. Evans, Mr. Holbrook, Ms. Fendley,Mr. McCleave, Mr. Lang

4/23/2018 Dr. Prokhorov Invariants.Number Theory.

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Guest Speakers

Two excellent guest lectures were delivered by Mr. Eric Harshbarger, Department of Math-ematics at Auburn University, and Dr. Jeff Mermin, Professor of Mathematics at OklahomaState University

Both lectures were great successes, each was attended by about 57 local high school andmiddle school students as well as members of the University Community. Funds for the travelexpenses of the guest speakers were provided by the Alabama Space Grant Consortium andthe University of South Alabama.

Mobile Mathematics Olympiad 2018

On March 12, 2018, the Mobile Mathematics Circle hosted the eighteenth Mobile MathematicsOlympiad. The Olympiad is open to all interested high school and middle school students. TheOlympiad is a two-hour written examination in which students tackle six problem of increasinglevels of difficulty. 45 students participated this year. Students from the following schoolswere represented: Alabama School of Math and Science, Baker High School, Causey MiddleSchool, Daphne High School, Davidson High School, McGill-Toolen Catholic High School, Mur-phy High School, Phillips Preparatory Middle School, St. Luke’s Episcopal School, St. Paul’sEpiscopal School. The first place winners: Gregory Li from Daphne High School and JosephStauter from Davidson High School. Book awards were presented to all participants of theMobile Math Olympiad. The organizers of the Mobile Math Circle greatly appreciated thecontributions by Mrs. Prokhorova from the Alabama School of Math and Sciences to this yearOlympiad.

Collaboration with the Mobile Math Teachers’ Circle

The Mobile Math Teachers’ Circle is an organization where local middle-school mathematicsteachers meet with professional mathematicians in a friendly, non-intimidating environment.The focus of these highly interactive meetings is on enhancing reasoning and problem-solvingskills. All participants are actively engaged in exploring different types of problems arising ina rich variety of contexts and practicing strategies for solving them. The Mobile MTC is apart of a growing national network of Math Teachers’ Circles (www.mathteacherscircle.org), aprogram developed by the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM).

The two primary goals of the Teachers’ Circle are:

• To enhance middle school math teachers’ problem solving and reasoning skills. By foster-ing the confidence to tackle open-ended math problems, middle school teachers becomebetter equipped to initiate more student-centered, inquiry-based pedagogies in their class-rooms.

• To provide guidance, materials, and resources to middle school math teachers that willenable them to promote open-ended problem solving as a way of learning, thinking about,and practicing mathematics in their classrooms.

The importance of teaching problem solving and reasoning is emphasized in the ”CommonCore Standards for Mathematical Practice”, recently adopted by the state of Alabama. Themission of the Mobile Math Teachers’ Circle is to help teachers to implement these standardsin the classroom.

Drs. Prokhorov and Pillen together with the Alabama Math, Science, and TechnologyInitiative (AMSTI) and USA’s College of Education are currently involved in a program toimprove middle-school math education. Approximately 20 teachers participate in regular meet-ings under the guidance of Drs. Dasinger, Prokhorov, Pillen and faculty from the College of

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Education. In addition, the program funds a summer workshop for local middle school teachers.

Demographic Information for the Mobile Math Circle

Here is some demographic information. Of the 185 students that participated in Math Circleactivities during the academic year 2017/18:

• 103 were female,

• 82 were male,

• at least 48 students were African American,

• at least 12 students were of Asian descent.

The racial background of many of our students is difficult to discern, and often we base ourevaluation on personal observations and are hesitant to ask directly an individual’s ethnicity.

We recruit our students primarily from public schools that have a high percentage, someover 50%, of African American students. In our recruitment we rely heavily on the public schoolteachers, but we also are personally involved in recruiting individual students. We regularlytarget outstanding African American high school students. In general, these students showan interest, but they often have other conflicting extra-curricular activities. In addition, wecontact acquaintances and community leaders (particularly African American) and ask themto send their children to the Mathematics Circle.

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