Who Wants to Be a Mathematician

October 22, 2010
On Thursday October 21 Carver's Honours Math classes went to UBC to attend a math lecture, the game Who Wants to Be a Mathematician, and a workshop.  It was a fun and informative event that was also our first ever math field trip.


Ten new things I learned were:

1. The Pythagorean Theorem may not have originally been created by Pythagoras, but rather by a Chinese mathematician.
2. The Pythagorean Theorem is always true on a flat plain.
3. There are an infinite number of Pythagorean triplets.
4. Mathematical theorems always remain true.
5. There are 7 millennium problems in the United States of America, created in 2000.  For solving one of these problems there is a million dollar reward.
6. Fermat's Last Theorem is not a millennium problem.
7. There is a million dollar reward for the solving of the formula y = x³ + ax +b.
8. The formula x³ + y³ = 1 is not possible.
9. Carl Gauss was a famous mathematician who summed all the integers from 1-100 while in elementary school.
10. The have computer designed to run math programs that can do guess and check.

The first thing we attended was the math lecture.   The talk was interesting and the professor made us all feel comfortable, even if we didn't understand everything.  It was fascinating to have him show us how to prove the Pythagorean Theorem true, especially as we frequently use it in class.  He also showed us how to prove that there are an infinite number of Pythagorean triplets, even if I didn't understand how he did it.  It was rather exciting to see how you don't need to be a brilliant mathematician to prove these theorems.  The professor also invited audience participation, which made it more interesting.  He spoke well, keeping the lecture from becoming dry.  All in all it was a fascinating experience.

After the lecture we watched the game Who Wants to Be a Mathematician in which a Carver student, Kathleen, participated in.  It was a lot of fun to watch her compete.

After lunch we attended a math workshop.  There were university students there to help us with our work.  As a grade ten student I was given a grade eight to ten worksheet and was able to do some of the questions while working with friends.  It was fun to be able just to try out the math, without worrying about it becoming homework.  One of the things I learned was when doing algebra always try to simplify as much as you can.  It also showed me that all the information given is there for a reason and to use it.  It was a learning experience.

I think we all enjoyed this field trip.