Institution: University of South Carolina
Reporting Year: 2013-2014
Advisor: Ronda Sanders and Maria Girardi
Advisor's Email Address: sanders@math.sc.edu and Girardi@math.sc.edu
Has There Been a Change in Chapter Advisor During the Past Year?: Yi Sun
Permanent Faculty Correspondent:
Permanent Faculty Correspondent's Email Address:
Officers: President - Charles Arnold (arnoldcw@email.sc.edu) Vice President - Sterling Swygert (swygerts@email.sc.edu) Treasurer - Alyssa Todaro (todaroam@email.sc.edu) Secretary - Marissa Brienza (brienza@email.sc.edu) and Melissa Murphy (murphy39@email.sc.edu)
Chapter Website: http://people.math.sc.edu/pme/
Number of New Members: 8
Number of Continuing Members: 19
Activities: Dr. Frank Thorne gave a talk on the Mathematics of the Price is Right. He showed the students how to apply concepts from probability, number theory, and combinatorics to win the most popular games. Afterwards, a few lucky students had the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and win small prizes by competing in mock versions of games from the show. For the first time, we also held a university-level Math Jeopardy competition. Dr. Matt Ballard wrote our questions and select participants were chosen to represent the University of South Carolina at the MAA-SE Math Jeopardy competition, at which our team took first place!
Do any of your chapter members plan to attend or present at the PME National Meeting this year? No.
Do you have any news about current students or recent graduations? For example, scholarships or other awards, acceptances to graduate school, paper presentations at conferences, etc.
No.
If you were awarded a PME Lectureship, Conference, or Prize Grant within the past year, please briefly describe the results.
We received a prize match grant with which we bought prizes for our 7th Annual Sudoku Extravaganza. Dr. Josh Cooper gave a talk on Sudoku and Graph Theory: Critical Sets. Afterwards, students competed in three rounds of Sudoku to see who could complete the most puzzles, who could complete puzzles the fastest, and who could complete the most difficult puzzles.