This page is no longer being updated and remains online for informational and historical purposes only. The information is accurate as of the last page update.
For questions about page contents, contact the Communications Division.
A team of five juniors won the math department’s spring Team Barge competition, sharing the $750 prize for first place.
The winners are: Zach Reiter (Easton, Pa.), a mathematics and computer science double major; Ryan McCall (Seneca, Pa.), a mathematics major; Brian Kronenthal (Yardley, Pa.) a mathematics major; Joshua Goldstein (Hockessin, Del.), a physics and mathematics double major; and Stephen Bruestle (Pennington, N.J.) with an independently designed major in economic history and major in mathematics.
“The purpose of the Team Barge competition is to provide further opportunities for students to think creatively about mathematics outside of the classroom,” says organizer Ethan Berkove, assistant professor of mathematics.
“In this regard, the competition has been extremely successful. Around 25 students from all four classes and a variety of majors formed seven teams and submitted solutions this semester. I was pleased to see that all of the participants shared the talent of working through difficult problems and presenting clear answers.”
Berkove adds that he was particularly impressed with the variety of techniques that students used to solve the weekly problems.
Claiming the second-place prize of $600 for the second consecutive semester in Team Barge were Keming Liang ’08 (Zibo, China) and mathematics majors Xue Ji ’08 (Wuxi Jiangsu, China) and Jordan Tirrell ’08(West Grove, Pa.).
Two teams tied for third place and each shared $450. Members included Aydin Gerek ’07 (Istanbul, Turkey), who is pursuing B.S. degrees in physics and math; Teruhisa Haruguchi ’07 (Saitamashi, Japan), who is seeking a B.S. degree in computer science and an A.B. degree with a math major; and Ko Ko Maung ’07 (Tharkayta Yangon, Myanmar), a mathematics-economics major.
The second team consisted of Shiliang Cui ’09 (Shanghai, China), Jinjin Qian ’08 (Shanghai, China), an economics & business major; and Ekaterina Jager ’06 (Tashkent, Uzbekistan), a candidate for B.S. degrees in both mathematics and electrical & computer engineering; who won the math department’s fall Team Barge competition
Held each semester, team barge has groups of three to five students attempting to solve a different weekly problem over eight weeks. Competitors are permitted to consult with books, computers, and other resources to solve the problems, but not faculty. Barge problems usually involve some ingenuity or insight and generally do not rely on background information from previous courses. The topics range over all areas of mathematics: probability, geometry, number theory, combinatorics, algebra, calculus, etc.
This is a sample from this spring’s problems, which can be found on the Barge web page:
Take a four digit number, reverse its digits, and look at the absolute value of the difference of the two, like so: | 3467 – 7643 | = 4176.
Can you ever get 2006 as the answer?