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| Festivalgoers can try their luck at colorful board games that incorporate math. Don’t worry, they’re still fun. Photo: Amanda Kowalski |
An affinity for numbers isn’t necessarily part of the equation at the National Math Festival.
“Don’t count yourself out because you don’t think of yourself as a math
person,” says Kirsten Bohl, project lead for Saturday’s event at the
Walter E. Washington Convention Center. The third iteration of the free
festival, organized by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute,
offers a hodgepodge of programming, including presentations, short
films, “mathletic” competitions, dance performances, puzzles and games.
Bohl emphasizes that while there’s plenty for kids and families, adults
could “spend all day taking in juicy talks.” Here are a number to
consider...
The Mathematics of Social Choice 11:30 a.m.-12:15 p.m.; 3:15-4 p.m.
There’s
a little election slated for 2020, which means it’s a fine time to
consider if there are better methods of determining the wishes of an
electorate than our system of plurality voting. Emily Riehl, an
assistant math professor at Johns Hopkins University, will examine how
various algorithms can have an impact on the way federal, state and
local elections play out — and help ensure that the winner reflects
voter intent. “What she’s going to do is explore: What if a
mathematician did try to make the voting process fairer? How would past
elections have turned out differently?” Bohl says. “It’s a great example
of how mathematicians are always thinking about different aspects of
our lives. Math really is behind everything in the world.”.
Math and the Movies 10:15-11 a.m.; 12:45-1:30 p.m.
You
know those wow-worthy effects in animated movies, like the swirling
snow in “Frozen” or the magical ocean in “Moana”? They’re the work of
math wizards. “It’s basically, how do we replicate or simulate the real
world via computers?” Bohl says, describing the scientific computing
Joseph Teran does for Walt Disney Animation Studios. Teran, a professor
of applied mathematics at UCLA, will explain why we need math to create
realistic animations. He’ll share a snowy scene from “Frozen,” for
example, that involves more than 7 million discrete particles (and also,
presumably, clarify what exactly a discrete particle is).
Walter E. Washington Convention Center, 801 Mount Vernon Place NW; Sat., 10 a.m.-4 p.m., free.
