Mobile Mathematics Circle

Final Report

Academic Year 2015-2016

Math Circle Highlights

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

• A total of 138 local high school and middle school students from 14 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 of34 students per session.

• Two guest speakers, leaders in the math circle movement, lead sessions.

• 40 students participated in the Mobile Mathematics Olympiad. Three winners wereaccompanied by Dr. Carter to the Colorado Mathematical Olympiad. Two won prizesat the Colorado 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.

• 7 graduate students in mathematics education participated in the Mobile MathematicsCircle’s training of future mathematics teachers. Students were introduced to problemsolving techniques and experienced teaching through problem solving by actively par-ticipating in the Math Circles. In addition, 5 home-school students, 4 teachers, and 4parents were among the attendees.

• An article about the Mobile Math Circle ”Summing it up. Helping young minds exploremath world” was published in the Press-Register on March 21, 2016.

• Drs. Prokhorov and Pillen participated in the annual meeting of the Alabama Associationof College Teachers of Mathematics. Pillen gave a presentation entitled “The Mobile MathCircle and the Mobile Math Teachers’ Circle”.

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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. Carter, Galaktionova, Pillen and Prokhorov were the principal or-ganizers and teachers of the Mobile Mathematics Circle during the academic year 2015-2016.The format for the sessions has always been the same. At 7:00 p.m. the students are givena handout consisting of 10 to 15 problems on a common topic. They are challenged to workon them one problem at a time. Students volunteer to present solutions or suggest ideas thatmight lead to solutions or they may ask questions. They may work together. They may cometo the board to write out their thoughts for all to see. The students are not shy about thinkingout loud, and they have become more and more active as the year has given them experiencein the Math Circle. As the students work and comment, the teachers in the room may moveabout to talk with individual students. Refreshments are provided.

It follows a list of participating schools (in alphabetical order):Alabama School of Math and Science, Baker High School, Causey Middle School, DavidsonHigh School, Dunbar Creative and Performing Arts Magnet School, Hankins Middle School,Mary G. Montgomery High School, Murphy High School, North Mobile Middle School, OldShell Road Magnet School, Saraland High School, Spanish Fort Middle School, St. Luke’sEpiscopal School, Theodore High School.

In Spring 2016 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 two sessions of the Math Circle underthe supervision of Dr. Prokhorov.

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Circle Sessions for 2015-2016

Date Session leader Topic

9/14/2015 Dr. Prokhorov A Moscow Math Circle, Set 12:Geometry, Number Theory

9/21/2015 Dr. Prokhorov A Moscow Math Circle, Sets 12 and 14:Symmetry, Geometry, Game Theory

9/28/2015 Dr. Pillen Da, Da, Da, . . . . Number Theory

10/5 /2015 Dr. Pillen Solitaire Square and Barber.Game Theory

10/19/2015 Dr. Prokhorov A Moscow Math Circle, Sets 13 and 14:Logic Problems

10/26/2015 Dr. Prokhorov A Moscow Math Circle, Sets 13 and 14:Number Theory

11/2/2015 Dr. Pillen Drinking Coffee and Playing Games.Game Theory

11/9/2015 Dr. Pillen A Horse Cannot Stand on Just Two Legs.Game Theory and Number Theory

11/16/2015 Dr. Iwan Praton (Guest Lecture) Tilling a Square with Smaller Squares.Franklin & Marshall College Geometry

11/30/2015 Dr. Galaktionova Ruler and Compass.Constructions. Geometry

1/25/2016 Dr. Prokhorov A Moscow Math Circle, Sets 15 and 16Number Theory. Logic Problems.The Triangle Inequality

2/01/2016 Dr. Prokhorov A Moscow Math Circle, Sets 15 and 16Geometry. The Triangle Inequality

2/15/2016 Dr. Pillen Old School Football with Coach Nash.Game Theory

2/22/2016 Dr. Pillen Take-Away and Divisor Games.Number Theory

2/29/2016 Dr. Prokhorov A Moscow Math Circle, Sets 15 and 16Game theory. Winnining Positions.Math Olympiad Problems

3/7/2016 Dr. Prokhorov A Moscow Math Circle, Sets 15 and 16Game theory. Winnining Positions.Mandelbrot Competition Problems

3/21/2016 16th Mobile Math Olympiad

3/28/2016 Dr. David Gay (Guest Lecture) 3-Dimensional Constructions withUniversity of Georgia Equilateral Triangles, Geometry

4/4/2016 Kimberly Baker, Sandra Bermudez, Number theory. Logic PuzzlesErika Conn LeAnne Green ,Stephanie Moye Joseph Swagart, Min Zhu(Math Ed Students)

4/18/2016 Dr. Pillen The Divisor Game, Chomp, Sprouts.Number Theory

4/26/2016 Kimberly Baker, Sandra Bermudez Logic Puzzles. OrigamiErika Conn LeAnne Green ,Stephanie Moye Joseph Swagart, Min Zhu(Math Ed Students)

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Guest Speakers

Two outstanding guest lectures were delivered by Dr. Iwan Praton, Franklin and MarshallCollege, Lancaster, PA, and Dr. David Gay, Professor of Mathematics at the University ofGeorgia

Both lectures were great successes, each was attended by about 40 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 2016

On March 21, 2016, the Mobile Mathematics Circle hosted the sixteenth 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. 40 students participated this year. Students from the following schools wererepresented: Alabama School of Math and Science, Baker High School, Dunbar Creative andPerforming Arts Magnet School, Hankins Middle School, Mary G. Montgomery High School,Murphy High School, North Mobile Middle School, Saraland High School, Spanish Fort MiddleSchool, Theodore High School. The organizers of the Mobile Math Circle greatly appreciatedthe contributions by Mrs. Prokhorova from the Alabama School of Math and Sciences and Dr.Garcia-Lopez from USA to this year Olympiad.

Dr. Carter escorted the first place winners Gregory Li from Spanish Fort Middle School,Jacob Dennis, and Matthew DeRocher from the Alabama School of Mathematics and Scienceto participate in the Colorado Math Olympiad at Colorado Springs on April 22, 2016. GregoryLi and Matthew DeRocher received Second Honorable Mention. The trip to Colorado wasfunded by by the Alabama Space Grant Consortium and matching funds by the Universityof South Alabama. Book awards were also presented to all participants of the Mobile MathOlympiad.

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.mathcircle.org), a programdeveloped by the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM).

The two primary goals of the Teachers’ Circle are: 1) To enhance middle school mathteachers’ problem solving and reasoning skills. By fostering the confidence to tackle open-ended math problems, middle school teachers become better equipped to initiate more student-centered, inquiry-based pedagogies in their classrooms. 2) To provide guidance, materials, andresources to middle school math teachers that will enable them to promote open-ended problemsolving 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 to im-

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prove middle-school math education. Approximately 20 teachers participate in regular meetingsunder the guidance of Drs. Prokhorov, Pillen and faculty from the College of Education. Inaddition, 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 138 students that participated in Math Circleactivities during the academic year 2015/16:

• 75 were female,

• 63 were male,

• at least 28 students were African American,

• at least 18 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 with a majority of African Americanstudents. In our recruitment we rely heavily on the public school teachers, but we also arepersonally involved in recruiting individual students. We regularly target outstanding AfricanAmerican high school students. In general, these students show an interest, but they oftenhave other conflicting extra-curricular activities. In addition, we contact acquaintances andcommunity leaders (particularly African American) and ask them to send their children to theMathematics Circle.

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