The third annual Arkansas Math Discovery Day is Saturday, March 7, from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. at the Fayetteville Public Library. It's intended for everybody, and it again will have interactive booths — especially intriguing, a display taking pi to one million digits and a challenge to find your birth date among those numbers.
This month, Matt Clay, professor and chair in the University of Arkansas Department of Mathematical Sciences, and Gina Clay, assistant librarian, Youth and Teen Services at the library, brought us a preview of the third Arkansas Math Discovery Day.
Matt Clay: Years one and two were amazing successes. I thought we had a great turnout of people from the community, people that were really involved and engaged with all the activities that we had about learning mathematics and exploring mathematics. And so I think that it's been a great success, and I'm really glad that we're here in year three.
Kyle Kellams: Library loves this, I imagine.
Gina Clay: Oh man, we love this. This type of event is so great. Brings all the people in the community out. We get to celebrate all these families and all these really fun things to do at the library.
Kellams: You've been there the previous two years?
G. Clay: I sure have.
Kellams: What's it been like for a non-mathematician, to watch this happen?
G. Clay: I think it's always really exciting to see people get really engaged with math and with the activities that the math department has and that we provide as well for our young children.
Kellams: Matt, what does it mean on your side for this partnership?
M. Clay: It really helps us reach the community. Being on campus is a very familiar space for people that are on campus a lot, but for people that aren't, it can be a little intimidating — not knowing where to park, not knowing where all the buildings are, and the spaces seem a little cold. And so having it in a space like the library where people can just show up. People just walk around the square, they just come on over on a Saturday, and all of a sudden on this Saturday, there's this wonderful event going on. Just being inserted into the great tradition of the awesome things that the library does for our community is really a huge benefit for us.
Kellams: Several booths this year. Something that's coming back this year is the poster of the pi number. And you find your birthday.
M. Clay: Exactly. We're going to do pi again this year. That was so much fun last year. It turned out to be a little more challenging than I think we anticipated. But perseverance is a great skill that you learn by studying mathematics. So for those people that really persevered and found their birthday, they were very, very pleased with themselves. I'm one of those people. It took me a long time but eventually found it. This year we've made it a little bit more friendly for folks. There's some color coding on it and we have some better instructions, but it's a really neat thing to just see a million digits and see the enormity of this, and then the opportunity to look through it with some guidance to try to find your birthday was a lot of fun.
Kellams: So last year I wasn't there — I was out of town, so I cheated. I went to this search engine where I put in just three digits for my birthday. Five, 20. Position 362. And I said, well, on most forms, it's zero-five, right, if you've got a birthday. When I added the zero, I was at position 20,247. So I'd still be able to find that on the poster.
M. Clay: Yeah.
Kellams: Now, if I put in the last two numbers — 63 — I'm not going to find this on the poster. 0-5-2-0-6-3 is at 6.7 million.
M. Clay: We need some bigger signs. I think that's what you're telling us.
Kellams: And then if I went 0-5-2-0-1-9-6-3 — It's position 935,638,572.
M. Clay: It's so cool.
Kellams: And that is what is so amazing about this and the other booths. I can't believe that if you take pi long enough, I'll find the eight-digit number I'm looking for.
The other one I'm looking forward to is the four-color theorem.
M. Clay: Oh, yes, that's a fun one. This is a really neat, fundamental fact that any map you can draw — with countries and oceans, lakes, whatever kind of things you want to put on a map — you can use four colors and color the map in a way that no two regions will share the same color.
Kellams: I mean, I believe you, but I've got to —
G. Clay: We've got to see it, right, Kyle? And that's what's so great about Saturday.
M. Clay: Yeah, that's a great booth too, because it's a really great one for people of all ages. We'll have a lot of different maps there and we'll have colors, and so young kids can go there and try to do it. We have some ones that are kind of challenging as well. For adults to try to make it work with just four colors, it can really sort of run the whole age range for your family.
Kellams: There's one that you unfold a pool table to see which pocket the balls might go into. It just sounds fun. Gina.
G. Clay: Yeah, I think it's going to be a whole lot of fun. And we're really excited. The Center for Innovation is going to have a booth there, of course. And theirs is music-based, so I think it'll be really great.
Kellams: What more can you tell me about that?
G. Clay: They're going to have a tiny synth playground there so that you can see the kind of waves that the music makes, and also how when you change the slope, the sound is going to be different. And I think that it's just a good booth to talk about sequencing and patterns, but beyond that, I think you're going to have to ask the experts.
Kellams: Is there almost something every weekend day at the library? Maybe not math discovery, but something going on?
G. Clay: Absolutely. Every Saturday we have our Super Saturdays at 10 o'clock for families and young children in the community, and there's so many adult programming going on on the weekends as well.
Kellams: So free.
G. Clay: Always free, right? That's the best part, Kyle.
Kellams: Don't have to be too good at math to understand that. What about University of Arkansas students — what do they get out of this?
M. Clay: The graduate students and a lot of undergraduates from our department gain a lot out of it, just with that practice of talking about mathematics in a way that's accessible to everyone. Math is one of those things — maybe a lot of things are one of those things — but the more you talk about it, the more you understand what you know and what you don't know, and the more you really get to a good sense of the topic. And so by having the students there interacting with the community, they're really learning what they know, what they don't know, how they can describe it better. It's a great opportunity for them.
Kellams: Where can we find out more about this particular day and all the other things going on at the library?
G. Clay: Absolutely. You can always find our events at faylib.org/events and in our newsletter as well, and we post it on Facebook.
Kellams: Thank you both for coming in.
Gina Clay is assistant librarian, Youth and Teen Services at the Fayetteville Public Library. Matt Clay is professor and chair in the University of Arkansas Department of Mathematical Sciences. The third Arkansas Math Discovery Day is Saturday, March 7, from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. at the Fayetteville Public Library. Most of the booths will be in the event center. Some activities for younger children will be in the craft and storytime rooms.
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