From: Jo Falcon (jofalcon@exploratorium.edu)
Date: Mon Mar 01 2004 - 12:43:48 PST
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 12:43:48 -0800 (PST) From: Jo Falcon <jofalcon@exploratorium.edu> Subject: "Visual Math" on March 10! (fwd) Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0403011208200.26719-100000@isaac>
I'm forwarding a meeting announcement from YLEM, a group of artists
working with science and technology. (Pronounced "EYE-lum," it means the
primordial matter that exploded in the Big Bag.) They've been associated
with the Exploratorium for years, and often meet here. This particular
session, on using dance, embroidery, and other means to bring math to
visual learners, seems to be particularly promising for teachers.
(Sorry, this doesn't mean the whole Museum's open late Wednesdays again --
just the McBean, and only for the YLEM Forum. Nor will the library be
open that night.)
In addition to the official program this is a good chance to schmoooze
with artists who might become resources for your classes or math clubs.
Take a look at their website, www.ylem.org -- and next time you're in the
Learning Studio, we've got several years of the YLEM Journal (and
directories!)
Jo Falcon, MLIS
The Exploratorium Learning Studio
415 561-0343
"We unscrew the inscrutable."
---------- Forwarded message ----------
YLEM Forum: Math Made Visible
Wednesday, March 10, 7:30 PM
McBean Theater, The Exploratorium
3601 Lyon St., San Francisco, CA 94123
The YLEM Forum is free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible.
Math patterns, often intricate and even paradoxical, are beautiful in a
way that keeps us interested. Each time we look we see more. The visual
arts are also a way to illustrate the odd and wonderful aspects of
math. On the program are Dr. Keith Devlin of Stanford, best known as
'the math guy' on NPR, Mary Teetor, who embroiders math patterns, and
Dr. Schaffer, whose travelling dance troupe, 'Dancing about Math with
Dr. Schaffer and Mr. Stern' has made math concepts vivid to
schoolchildren all over the country.
Program
Dr. Keith Devlin, 'the Math Guy' who explains math to ordinary people
on NPR’s 'Weekend Edition,' will present
'The Da Vinci Code and the Golden Ratio: Fact versus Fiction' a subject
dealt with in Dan Brown's bestselling novel _The Da Vinci Code_. Many
claims are made about this number: that it gives the dimensions of the
rectangle the human eye finds most pleasing, that it is found
everywhere in architecture, in music, in art, and throughout nature,
and that it is closely related to Fibonacci's 13th Century problem
about a growing rabbit colony. Many of the most common claims are
simply false, but some of the more surprising ones are true. In this
talk, Devlin will sort out the fact from the fiction, ending with a
remarkable link between the Golden Ratio, the awarding of a Nobel prize
in physics and a mathematical explanation of why we can see through
glass.
Devlin is not only a mathematician, but an expert in How to Explain,
being Executive Director of Stanford University's Center for the Study
of Language and Information. He is also a co-founder and Executive
Director of Stanford's Media X program, and a Consulting Professor of
Mathematics at Stanford. His 24 books include two with color pictures
that would dazzle artists. They are: Mathematics, the Science of
Patterns (Scientific American Library) and Life by the Numbers (John
Wiley). One of his latest is: The Math Gene: How Mathematical Thinking
Evolved, and Why Numbers are Like Gossip. He writes a monthly column,
'Devlin's Angle,' on the web journal MAA Online. Since 1983, he has
written a regular column on mathematics and computers for The Guardian
newspaper in his native Britain. http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~devlin/
Mary Teetor will show us her unique tessellation-pattern shadow
stitching, and how she arrives at her designs. "I took up embroidery
thirty-five years ago when I quit smoking." She became intrigued with
drawn-fabric work, which pulls the threads of the fabric apart to
create lacy patterns. Ten years ago, she developed this new kind of
embroidery. She worked within the constraints of three requirements:
first, that the tessellations must be usable on the grid of a woven
fabric; second, that there must be negative (unembroidered) as well as
positive space in each tessellation; and third, that the polygons touch
only at their apexes. Triangles, hexagons and even pentagons, she
found, are possible on the square grid. Consulting several mathematics
books, she has invented more than 400 patterns for the technique, of
which she has stitched 50.
Dr. Karl Schaffer, of the Dr. Schaffer and Mr. Stern Dance Ensemble,
will discuss and show video clips of performances the troupe has given
across the country for audiences of all ages. For three straight years
it received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts for its
work integrating dance and mathematics. "Our math dance work grew from
two seeds. As choreographers, much of our work springs from play with
ideas from the world of mathematics. As teachers, we have found that
mathematical ideas become more exciting, tangible and memorable when
you act them out with your whole body." In collaboration with Scott
Kim, a member of the troupe, Schaffer and Stern have published an idea
book for teachers, _MathDance with Dr. Schaffer and Mr. Stern_.
http://www.mathdance.org and http://www.schafferstern.org.
Sponsored by YLEM: Artists Using Science and Technology - great Forums
for 22 years!
Contact: Trudy Reagan, 650-856-9593, trudymyrrh@earthlink.net Complete
information listed at http://www.ylem.org/flash/forum/calendar.html or
http://www.ylem.org/text/forum/calendar.html for modem users. ###
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