Saturday February 28: P-adics and Napier's Bones

[MercerCounty MathCircle]

Hi All,

My name is Roy and I will be replacing Ante this year for coordinating the Math Circle! A little introduction: I am a sophomore math major at Princeton and I'm originally from the chilly state of Minnesota!

We have a fun math circle this Valentine's day with Roger Van Peski giving us an introduction to p-adics and infinite series. Then Harini will be talking about Napier's Bones.

The details are below and feel free to stay for both sessions!

Sincerely,

Roy

PS: We're having technical difficulties right now accessing the WordPress but we will post all this information on the website once we've resolved those issues! Stay tuned for another email soon with links to the WordPress.

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Advanced Series

Title: Better Living Through Infinite Series: The p-Adics

Speaker: Roger Van Peski

Time & Date: 2pm-3pm Saturday February 14

Location: Princeton Public Library, teen room (3rd floor)

Abstract: We’re going to talk a bit about a somewhat lesser-known cousin of the real numbers: the p-adics. These may be thought of as infinite geometric series of powers of a prime p, where we generously allow these series to retain their identity as independent ‘numbers’ rather than just throwing them away because they (often) diverge to infinity. Far from being a whimsical exercise in pretending things don’t diverge, they are actually extremely important in a wide variety of areas in math. They also have a lot of interesting properties—for instance, if two p-adic discs intersect at any point, one is contained in the other! We’ll define and discuss some of the fascinating ways in which the p-adic integers and p-adic rational numbers behave and their relation to the regular integers and rationals, as well as what being ‘cousin of the real numbers’ actually means in a rigorous sense.

Prerequisites: It will help if you’re comfortable working with infinite series, such as the geometric series you may have seen in precalculus or the variety of series in calculus.  

Chili peppers: 3 out of 4.

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Recreational Series

Title: Napier's Bones

Leader: Harini Subrahmanyam Fredrickson

Time & Date: 3:14pm - 4pm Saturday February 14

Location: Princeton Public Library, teen room (3rd floor)

Abstract: Come learn about Napier's Bones, a calculating tool that was in common use for nearly three centuries!

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Mercer County Math Circle
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