You can use graphs to help play "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"

A graph is used to show relationships between different objects.  In this case, it shows two actors as being connected if they have appeared in a movie together.  Can you always reach Kevin Bacon is six steps or less?

Graph for Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon from the Wolfram Demonstrations Project by Arnab Kar

You can study how to teach a computer to do calculus

 This demonstration compares several different numerical methods for computing the area under a curve.

Comparing Basic Numerical Integration Methods from the Wolfram Demonstrations Project by Jim Brandt

You get to study about how internet encryption works

How is it that everyone can send information to the bank, but only the bank can read it?

More on Fibonacci

You know what Fibonacci numbers and the Golden Ratio look like in nature from the last post.  Now what are those numbers, and why are they so special?

You study the golden ratio.

This is a great video that helps to visualize one of the fundamental constants of mathematics.

You get to study infinity.

Think you know about infinity?  Did you know that there are different sizes of infinity?

You could get to visit Antarctica.

I know Ken.  He's taken many undergraduate students on trips to the South Pole.

You can develop tools to work with large data sets.

Mathematicians are currently developing tools to help analyze large data sets.  Some of these tools are discussed in Discrete Mathematics (Math 221).

You get to explore patterns.

Mathematicians love to find patterns and then prove that those patters always occur.

You could improve on pi.

Vi Hart thinks pi should be replaced by a different constant tau=2*pi.  What do you think?

You'll study about pi.

What is pi?  We all know that it's about 3.14159..., but how exactly is pi defined?

Why Study Math?