By Britney Botez | Staff Writer
The Whitworth Math Club is a new student-led organization, recently approved by ASWU, which encourages students from any major or discipline to come together for math games, puzzles and complex equations which require multiple people to solve.
Math Club President Andrew Bergman, ’23, explained his vision for the math club.
“I’ve been talking about it for a very long time, having fun with other people who enjoy math and bringing people together to solve math puzzles,” Bergman said. “It seemed like a lot of people enjoyed them so I decided to formalize this activity.”
Bergman shared what some Math Club meetings have looked like so far.
“We’ve met a few times and so far, it’s been I bring a puzzle and just kind of let them have at it, let them work together or on their own and they just work their way through it,” Bergman said. “We have had a professor come and talk about their research, which was really cool, and we also just talk about math in general.”
The Math Club puzzles and games are not competitive and are facilitated as community-building activities which enhance the mathematical skills of members.
An example of one of the puzzles presented at Math Club, is: “A, B, C, D = 63, so what is the maximum value of AB+BC+CD?” This problem requires the utilization of various areas of math, such as algebra and geometry.
“We’ve had non-math people there and I’m hoping they can get something out of it, even if it’s just that they enjoy doing puzzles,” Bergman said. “We’re thinking outside of the box, because it’s not like a math class where they teach you something and then you do five or ten problems. That gets tedious and boring. This is more like, ‘here’s the situation, apply, take what you know, and think about how to solve it.”