Brett Foster, an undergraduate at Missouri State, won the first-place prize. Logan Sullivan, also an undergraduate at Missouri State, was runner-up. Matthew Prince, Andrew Swift, an undergraduate at Missouri State, Zach Durham, an undergraduate at Missouri State, Aries Chan, a graduate student at Missori State, Georges Ghosn of Montreal (Canada), Anita Dixon of Forsyth Missouri, and Jason Forrest (an MSU alum) answered all five questions correctly.

Monday: This year, the theme for Mathematics Awareness Month is “Mathematics and Climate”.  In keeping with this theme, the first question in our contest is about a meteorologist/mathematician.   He was one of the first to discover that the dynamical systems that arise when studying weather may exhibit chaotic behavior.  He is also credited with the concept of the “butterfly effect”: the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Buenos Aires can cause a hurricane in Houston.

Who was he?

Tuesday: This month (April 2009), marks the 100^th anniversary of the birth of this Polish mathematician who developed a number of mathematical tools in number theory, set theory, ergodic theory, and algebraic topology. While participated in the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, he (and others) developed the Monte-Carlo method, which allows one to obtain numerical solutions to problems which are too complicated to solve analytically. His autobiography was "Adventures of a Mathematician".

Who was he?

Wednesday: A prime number is a whole number bigger than one that cannot be written as the product of two smaller whole numbers. For example, 15 is not prime since it is equal to 5 times 3. On the other hand, 11 is prime since it can only be factored as 11 times 1.

Note that 2009 is not prime, since 2009 = 7×7×71. What is the first prime that begins with the digits 2009?

Thursday: The large square shown has area 1. The interior lines join a vertex of the square to the midpoint of a side as shown. What is the area of the small central square?

Friday: In the diagram shown, how many ways are there to move from point A to point B given that you are only allowed to move along lines in the direction of the arrows?

Answers

The answers to the questions are here.

Here are the results from last year's contest.

Here is more information about Math Awareness Month

Return to the Math Department homepage